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Lot Essay
Painted in 2019, Inkonjane 1 is a vivid, finely-wrought example of Cinga Samson’s enigmatic figurative language. Against an inky, crepuscular backdrop, saturated with deep midnight blue tones, a lone figure emerges. With bright, glazed-out eyes—a hallmark of Samson’s portraiture—he carries a Guess bag in one hand, the other tucked into the pocket of his jeans. Drawing together ideas from art history, fashion and his own spiritual heritage, Samson creates imaginary portraits whose subjects seem suspended between realms. The use of global brand names in his work, combined with his ethereal, twilit settings, seeks to explore the relationship between desire and superstition: figures such as the present are at once worldly and otherworldly, caught between consumerist fantasy and spiritual transcendence. The work’s title Inkonjane—the Zulu word for a swallow—seems to speak directly to this premise, conjuring a sense of transfiguration. Samson’s 2019 exhibition at Blank Projects, notably, drew inspiration from Nigerian author Ben Okri, whose 1991 novel The Famished Road described a primordial land in which ‘we could assume numerous forms. Many of us were birds.’
Samson has risen to prominence over the past decade, receiving the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts in his native South Africa in 2017; following his New York debut in 2020, he mounted a solo exhibition at the FLAG Art Foundation earlier this year. In his youth, Samson joined an artistic collective in Cape Town, where he shared a studio with several other artists. Though peppered with references to the Western canon—from Andrew Wyeth and Paul Gauguin, to Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele—his practice is primarily rooted in exploring his own sense of identity as a young man. He works from a combination of sketches and carefully staged photoshoots, using himself and his brother as models, and often sourcing fake copies of designer items as props. ‘The young generation … want to present themselves as desirable and attractive’, he explains. ‘That is why these fashion items appear in the paintings. They refer to this process of feeling better, of aspiring to a better position in life’ (C. Samson, quoted in interview with Perrotin, December 2018). Here, the model’s pose on the bag works in curious dialogue with the subject’s own stance, creating the sense of a portrait within a portrait.
Samson’s practice also owes much to his upbringing in town of Ethembeni in the Eastern Cape. He cites the region’s lush countryside as inspiration for many of his settings, along with the various spiritual ideas and beliefs he was exposed to during his youth. ‘I think that almost every African has experienced that kind of spirituality in their own family and community’, he explains. ‘I don’t know if spirituality is as much part of the everyday life anywhere else in the world, but here it is definitely part of who we are’. He goes on to explain that the distinctive blank eyes of his characters was informed by the experience of walking with his cousin at night in search of a cow they were tending. ‘The moon was low and very bright,’ he recalls, ‘it was shining on us and reflecting the white of our eyes. It remains such a strong memory that every time I work on a painting, I remember this night. The eyes of my characters reminds me of this moonlight; it’s a spiritual reference’ (C. Samson, ibid.). In Inkonjane 1, the figure’s gaze glimmers brightly amid the darkness, as if transfixed upon an unknown dimension.
Samson has risen to prominence over the past decade, receiving the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts in his native South Africa in 2017; following his New York debut in 2020, he mounted a solo exhibition at the FLAG Art Foundation earlier this year. In his youth, Samson joined an artistic collective in Cape Town, where he shared a studio with several other artists. Though peppered with references to the Western canon—from Andrew Wyeth and Paul Gauguin, to Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele—his practice is primarily rooted in exploring his own sense of identity as a young man. He works from a combination of sketches and carefully staged photoshoots, using himself and his brother as models, and often sourcing fake copies of designer items as props. ‘The young generation … want to present themselves as desirable and attractive’, he explains. ‘That is why these fashion items appear in the paintings. They refer to this process of feeling better, of aspiring to a better position in life’ (C. Samson, quoted in interview with Perrotin, December 2018). Here, the model’s pose on the bag works in curious dialogue with the subject’s own stance, creating the sense of a portrait within a portrait.
Samson’s practice also owes much to his upbringing in town of Ethembeni in the Eastern Cape. He cites the region’s lush countryside as inspiration for many of his settings, along with the various spiritual ideas and beliefs he was exposed to during his youth. ‘I think that almost every African has experienced that kind of spirituality in their own family and community’, he explains. ‘I don’t know if spirituality is as much part of the everyday life anywhere else in the world, but here it is definitely part of who we are’. He goes on to explain that the distinctive blank eyes of his characters was informed by the experience of walking with his cousin at night in search of a cow they were tending. ‘The moon was low and very bright,’ he recalls, ‘it was shining on us and reflecting the white of our eyes. It remains such a strong memory that every time I work on a painting, I remember this night. The eyes of my characters reminds me of this moonlight; it’s a spiritual reference’ (C. Samson, ibid.). In Inkonjane 1, the figure’s gaze glimmers brightly amid the darkness, as if transfixed upon an unknown dimension.