Lwando Dlamini
Lwando Dlamini was born in the Eastern Cape but spent most of his upbringing in the Western Cape. Dlamini lives and works between Cape Town and Johannesburg using oil paints and mixed media as his main mediums of expression.
His work draws from his lived experiences by reinforcing our awareness of the fragility of the human body. Bold colour and texture are conduits for meditating on this potential for brokenness with a particular focus on memory loss. Lwando has expanded his references to including the imagery of black joy from social media platforms and the imagination of liberated black bodies.
‘In his work, Dlamini layers paint thickly onto the surface so that brushstrokes and palette knife marks are visible. This has become a distinct feature of his oeuvre. 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
Dlamini has participated in numerous exhibitions and art fairs including FNB Art Joburg, Intersect
Chicago, Investec Cape Town Art Fair and African Galleries Now. His first solo exhibition, ‘Triumph’, at EBONY/CURATED was held in Cape Town in 2020. Dlamini graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art from the Ruth Prowse School of Art and was awarded the 2018 David Koloane award from the Bag Factory Artist Studios. Dlamini was a finalist at the Absa L'Atelier Art competition and in 2019 was amongst the young emerging visual artists who were selected to be part of the RMB talent unlocked-programme at the 2019 Turbine Art Fair. He was awarded the August House Emerging Residency Artist Award from the Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards 2022. Lwando has initiated his own art prize at the Ruth Prowse School of Art as a way to support and further contribute to the development of Black artists practices.
Solo Exhibitions:
2022 LEARNING HOW TO BE LESS AFRAID BRAVE, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa 2020 Triumph, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
Selected Group Exhibitions
2022 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, EBONY/CURATED Main Booth B3, South Africa 2021 Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt, Open City, Keyes Art Mile, Rosebank,
Johannesburg, South Africa
8X8, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
Investec Cape Town Art Fair Digital Event
EBONY/CURATED booth, Cape Town, South Africa
1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, New York, United States of America
‘In [the] Loop, EBONY/CURATED, Cape Town, South Africa
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