Tsoku Maela
Inspired by the realm of dreams as an archive, Maela’s work and practice primarily concerns itself with human behavior and well-being within socio-economic and psychospiritual frameworks, particularly in African contexts.
Tsoku Maela was born in the Limpopo province, South Africa, and works between Johannesburg and Cape Town. He completed his undergraduate at The South African School of Motion Picture Medium, Cape Town, in 2014. He worked as a copywriter and scriptwriter for both corporate advertising and live television shortly thereafter, but it was in his experimental photography as a hobbyist where he found clarity in issues of the mind, body, and spirit through modes of storytelling and dreams as an archive of past and future realities.
Growing up in a country scarred by colonial histories and living as part of a generation navigating the self through a young democracy, Maela's approach utilizes these memories and histories to construct new African, global perspectives and futures. In short: Using story to empower and heal instead of reliving historical traumas with no end in sight.
Maela was awarded the Standard Bank Rising Star Award in 2016 for Media & Marketing, and has exhibited in Lagos, Zürich, Miami at Art Basel and a selection of student-organized exhibitions such as Ljubljana University Medical Centre in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Private collections of his works include the contemporary art collection M&C SAATCHI, Amawal collection, and the JP Morgan Abadali art collection, among others.
COUNTRY • SOUTH AFRICA
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