Discover the rich and complex Cubist-inspired works of Mmangaliso Nzuza

Mmangaliso Nzuza (b.1998 in Empangeni, South Africa) is a painter based in Cape Town. Working primarily on a large scale, his sensuous oil paintings depict angular, figurative compositions imbued with both the familiar and imagined.

 

In 2022, Nzuza completed a MA (Hons) in Government, Policy and Society at the University of Edinburgh before returning to South Africa to pursue art. Growing up in a conservative environment, he used artmaking as an outlet to negotiate a rich and complex interior life. In inventing and refining his own style, he sought to convey more feeling and movement, more vulnerability in his subjects.

 

 

Nzuza has arrived at a distinctive visual language that is both painterly and restrained, recalling the bold fragmentation of the early 20th-century Cubist painters. The human figure acts as a springboard for his interest in composition; drawn without particularity from a learned muscle memory, his bodies contort into exploratory proportions and configurations. His subjects are weighted, exuding solidity and a sculptural presence that seem to declare “We are here”.

 

Drawing on allegorical symbols, colour theory and gestural mark-making, he harnesses his practice as means to navigate the self and other, exploring themes of community and subjectivity in his portraits and still-lifes.

 

 

Nzuza has shown his work in fairs such as 1-54 (London and New York), Prizm (Miami), The Armory Show (New York), Enter Art Fair (Copenhagen), and the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, including a Solo booth presented by THK Gallery. He was an artist-in-residence at Quartier am Hafen in Cologne, Germany in 2023, and has taken part in group exhibitions including RE-KNEW-ED at The Gallery Society in Edinburgh and Sasol New Signatures: Art Beyond Imagination at Pretoria Art Museum in South Africa. His first solo exhibition, An Open Letter, opens at Southern Guild Cape Town in August 2024.