Zama Mwandla

South Africa

About the Artist

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.

Exhibitions

  • 2022 Fresh Voices, Guns & Rain, Johanneburg
  • 2021 NEWWORK21, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg
  • 2021 ESCAPISM, Point of Order, Johannesburg
  • 2021 Joburg Fringe, The Art Room, Johannesburg
  • 2021 She Impressions: Let It Be Known, Online
  • 2020 Black Notes, Alfajiri in Maboneng, Johannesburg
  • 2019 African Feminism (Afems) conference, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg

Collections

  • Amawal Collection, Spain
  • Schütz Collection, Austria

Selected Works

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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