Renowned Welkom artist, Nkoali Nawa, has again outdone himself with the art he has created for his solo exhibition at the Sisonke Art Gallery in Cape Town.
Nawa says he has been hard at work indoors creating the body of work that is going to be part of the show sponsored by the Spier Arts Trust.
The exhibition opens on 5 October and is titled Challenges.
Writer Kolodi Senong describes Nawa’s art as social reportage and suggests it is valuable as an expression of the black experience in South Africa. His monochromatic language, which consists charcoal drawings, allows and sets a sombre tone. His art recalls the work of William Kentridge and Diane Victor, writes Senong of Nawa’s work.
Kentridge and Victor are two other prominent South African artist associated with gritty realism.
One of the main objectives of the Spier Arts Trust is to facilitate opportunities for artist career development, recognise art as a key visual language, and believe it can drive social transformation.
Nawa started his working life in the mines in Welkom, where he grew up. This industry is indelibly linked to South Africa’s social and political history, driving the development of towns and cities and some of the exploitative and sometimes dehumanising practices historically tied to it, writes Senong.
Working at the stope-face of this industry and having first-hand experience of it has shaped Nawa’s outlook as an artist.
Nawa always has in mind a story he wishes to tell. In this instance, the challenges he noticed and personally faced in the informal settlements of Mfuleni (Cape Town), where he lived for some time. Challenges presents the viewer with ten charcoal drawings that reference identity, belonging, and the painful complexity of navigating cultural differences, acknowledging the resilience of the human spirit through his experiences, borne by his faith. It is a testament to the triumph of the human spirit and will leave the viewer deeply moved.
He says he regularly returns to his photographic archive, selecting different images and piecing them together in creating a narrative. He aims to recreate a social scene, even though perhaps not all of the images were taken in the same setting or year.
Nawa works on drawings that relate to each other in terms of subject-matter and this suits his manner of working. He rarely works on one drawing at a time, preferring to move between multiple works simultaneously.
In translating photographs into drawings, he is not completely faithful to reality – he adapts the images to suit a composition that pleases his eye.
Nawa is also inspired by western artists such as Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier, and even Vincent Van Gogh, who also showed an interest in capturing the lives of the veritable person in the street.
