LWANDO DLAMINI
Ekapa

04.05.24 - 25.05.24

Solo Exhibition
Kalashnikovv Gallery, Johannesburg

Lwando Dlamini’s practice draws from his encounters with acute fragility of the human body and violence. By reinforcing our awareness of this vulnerability bold colour and texture are conduits for meditating on the potential for brokenness, with a particular focus on memory loss. Lwando has expanded his commentary to including the imagery of black joy as drawn from social media and the imagination of liberated black bodies against surreal scapes.

‘In his work, Dlamini layers paint thickly onto the surface so that brushstrokes and palette knife marks are visible. Dlamini highlights his commitment to testing the boundaries of his working mediums...we are confronted with discomfort - images and figures that are curved and distorted, with certain features (eyes and lips in particular) exaggerated and others (nose and ears) minimised. These are extraordinary images not concerned with simple ideas of beauty — but rather, they are an investigation of fragility and the strangeness of life’. Nkgopoleng Moloi.