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Lot Essay
Nicholas Hlobo is a South African artist, born in Cape Town in 1975 and now living and working in Johannesburg. Hlobo’s work often contrasts the masculine and the feminine through use of materials like ribbon, leather, wood, cotton thread and rubber. All of these chosen materials pertain to aspects of cultural, gendered, sexual, or ethnic identity. The start of Hlobo’s career coincided with the end of apartheid and the emergence of a new South African identity with a new cultural output.
In Inkosana, a flash of colour appears in the centre of the work where Hlobo has attached a length of bright red cotton thread to the canvas. This scarlet thread at the heart of the composition bears a striking resemblance to a serious yet ultimately treatable wound.
Nicholas Hlobo has held solo exhibitions at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, Cape Town (2017) and Tate Modern, London (2008), and has been included in group exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London (2019), Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017), the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. (both 2015). Hlobo was included in the Liverpool Biennale (2021) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). He was selected as a protégé by mentor Anish Kapoor as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.
In Inkosana, a flash of colour appears in the centre of the work where Hlobo has attached a length of bright red cotton thread to the canvas. This scarlet thread at the heart of the composition bears a striking resemblance to a serious yet ultimately treatable wound.
Nicholas Hlobo has held solo exhibitions at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, Cape Town (2017) and Tate Modern, London (2008), and has been included in group exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, London (2019), Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2017), the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C. (both 2015). Hlobo was included in the Liverpool Biennale (2021) and the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). He was selected as a protégé by mentor Anish Kapoor as part of the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative.