Hlobo Nicholas
Born in 1975 in Cape Town, Nicholas Hlobo graduated with a degree in painting from the Witwatersrand Technikon University in Johannesburg in 2002. His work is set against the specific backdrop of South Africa, a country that has recently been navigating a fragile and ever-changing democratic landscape whilst striving to eradicate discrimination based on gender, ethnicity and religion. Nicholas Hlobo’s personality, comprising multiple and, at first glance, contradictory identities, is shaped by his own experience as a black, gay man belonging to the Xhosa community. In his works, the artist draws upon the oral traditions, beliefs and rites of passage of his ethnic group, infusing them with the issues of race and gender inherent to his community. Inspired by the myths and songs of his childhood, the titles of these works act as guardians of the temple of his native language, which is being eroded by the ever-increasing presence of Anglicisms.
In the heart of his studio, Nicholas Hlobo tirelessly assembles fragments of black rubber inner tubes, leather, fabric, wood and blank canvases using multicoloured satin ribbons. Stitching with large overlock stitches, he creates arabesques and sinuous lines that are abstract and colourful. In contrast to certain sculptural traditions, these suspended, soft and heavy forms evoke an anthropomorphic or more animal-like vocabulary. The sensuality and contained violence of these sculptures – with their explicitly sexual, even sadomasochistic, connotations – are counterbalanced by forms in which the feminine and the masculine merge, but also through their activation by the ‘shamanic’ presence of the artist or performers. The raw materials are both evocative of a certain urban environment and indicative of a context of poverty and violence linked to their use in far more tragic events (necklacing).
