South Africa
Zama Mwandla is a Johannesburg-based artist working in painting and sculpture. Her work is informed by a radical feminist perspective, airing violent anti-masculine fantasies and imagining vengeance for the countless victims of gender-based violence in South Africa. Her paintings introduce a panoply of human-animal hybrids which reappear across different works, each character associated with particular meanings or roles.
Influenced by an early love of Japanese anime, Mwandla paints overwhelming surrealistic scenes that are highly codified and gendered. Through her bold re-tellings of the violence, rumination, psychopathic imagination, rage and grievance experienced by rape victims, she empathises with her characters and invites the viewer to do the same. In doing so, she creates a space for trauma, violence and anger to be observed and explored without destructive real world repercussions.
Mwandla graduated from Wits University in Johannesburg with a BA Fine Arts (Hons) in 2021, achieving multiple awards during her studies under the tutelage of artist and scholar Professor Sharlene Khan. In 2022 she participated in the exhibition Fresh Voices, at Guns & Rain, and in 2023 she was awarded a residency at the Schütz Museum in Engelhartszell, Austria.
You can view Mwandla’s debut group exhibition with Guns & Rain in the 2022 Fresh Voices catalogue.
Paradise: Two Peas in a Pod
2022 Oil on canvas 109 x 200.3 cm
Paradise: Family Portrait
2022 Oil on canvas 147.1 x 119.5 cm
Man Obsolete: Caught-off-guard
2022 Oil and Acrylic on canvas 59.2 x 84 cm
Man Obsolete: Ambush
2021 Oil and Acrylic on canvas 121.9 x 64.6 cm
Paradise: Forest of deceit
2022 Oil and Acrylic on canvas 149.7 x 149.7 cm
Man Obsolete: Indulge in shame
2022 Oil and Acrylic on canvas 80.3 x 120 cm
Man Obsolete: Virgin balls
2021 Mixed media 59 x 33 x 27 cm
Man Obsolete: Untitled
2021 Oil and Acrylic on canvas 151 x 246 cm
Man obsolete: Seamen milk
2021 Mixed media 50.5 x 13.9 x 9.8 cm
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