Born in 1990, Hofmeyr, Eastern Cape, SA, the artist now lives and works in Los Angeles’ fashion district. From a young age, the economic and social chips were stacked against him. Growing up in an impoverished part of post-apartheid South Africa did not lend itself favourably to a future carreer in contemporary art. Despite a lack of artistic resource, drawing afforded Ndzube and his peers an escape from the harsh realities of the day to day. His mother was the first to take notice of his talent and went out of her way to provide the budding artist with the educational tools he needed to develop. After tragically losing his mum in 2008, painting provided Ndzube a space to grieve and remember, and as he poured his heart and soul into his craft, he began to appreciate art’s capacity to heal.

Ndzube looks to ally current struggles with past experience in his work, as he grapples with his place as an African man living in cosmopolitan America. This interplay is underpinned by Ndzube’s incorporation of varied media, objects and two-dimensional surfaces into his work. A painting can speak to the post-colonial realities of an exploited land whose resources have been plundered, while a 3D form with strange limbs reaches out at you from the canvas, and positions the seemingly distant historical issues in the here and now. This hybridized approach spares his work from categorisation, as he creates worlds that break through barriers of expectation and normality and serve as a testament to his magic realist forefathers.

Simphiwe: “Any space where you are able to stop and recreate your own reality in whatever way is an act of resistance”.

Simphiwe Ndzube

South African

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