Vusi Khumalo
Vusi Khumalo (b. 1951, Balfour North, Gauteng, South Africa) completed his basic education in Germiston, thereafter spending 10 years working in various companies in South Africa. In 1986, whilst still working in Germiston, Khumalo felt impelled to leave apartheid South Africa. As a long standing member of the African National Congress, he left with his family for A.N.C. camps in Zambia and Tanzania. It was in Dakawa Camp, Tanzania, where he first had an opportunity to explore fully his life-long hobby - art. Having completed his 0-level General Certificate of Education, through correspondence with the University of London, Khumalo began to be trained and later, to teach textile printing, art and design. This culminated in a summer course in art in the Gerlesberg Art School, Sweden, in 1991.
In 1992, Khumalo was repatriated and the Dakawa Art and Craft Community Centre was re-established in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape. He continued to teach there and his efforts won him a one year scholarship to the Konstfack National Art College, Stockholm, where he gained a certificate in textile printing and "art". In 1996, Dakawa’s funding from Sweden was withdrawn and Khumalo decided the time was ripe for him to dedicate himself full time to his own art.
His efforts to render the South African landscape, and particularly the burgeoning squatter communities within that landscape, were frustrated, as he found that oil painting did not bring him the intense realism that he wanted to evoke. This led him to his startlingly real collages. Khumalo, by reconstructing the infamous squatter camps, takes us where we might, otherwise, fear to tread and, perhaps, reminds us that behind the media facade of brutality, crime and squalor. These "growths" on our landscape are populated by human beings under trying circumstances.
Khumalo is now working as a full time artist in the Eastern Cape, where he lives with his wife, Lokhuthula and their two children.
Selected Exhibitions
2018
20 years on, Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2016
Opening Gallery Exhibition, CIRCA Gallery, London, UK
Winter Collection, Group Show, Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2015
Empire, Group Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2014
People and Places, Group Exhibition, Imibala Gallery in association with Everard Read, South Africa
Postcards from Mzansi, Solo Exhibition, Everard Read Cape Town, South Africa
2013
Possessed, Group Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Centenary, Group Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2011
Small Works, Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2010
View from the South, Group Show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Khumalo, Mzimba, Dyaloyi, Three Man Exhibition at Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2009
The City, Group Show, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2008
The Wave, Chinese Cultural Exchange, the Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2007
One Man Exhibition, Portland Gallery, London, UK
Exhibition at the Hubei Institute, Wuhan China as the second leg of a cultural exchange
2006
Cultural Exchange – A group exhibition exploring China with 4 Professors from The Hubei Institute of fine art after a visit to Wuhan China – Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
Abstraction, Solo Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
2005
Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
2004
One Man Exhibition, Portland Gallery, London, UK
2003
Solo Show, Everard Read, Johannesburg, South Africa
2000
One Man Exhibition, October at the Portland Gallery, London, UK
1998
Solo Exhibition, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa
1996
Two Man Exhibition , Two World with Roxandra Dardagan and Skotnes Gallery, Albany Museum, Grahamstown Art Festival, South Africa
Me and Myself, Solo Exhibition, Wezandla Art Gallery, Port Elizabeth Textile Art Printing and Painting, South Africa
1995
Manscape, Solo Exhibition, Wezandla Gallery, Port Elizabeth, South Africa
1994
One man Exhibition, Konstfack National Art College, Stockholm, Sweden
1989-91
Part of a touring group exhibition in Sweden and Norway
1988-91
Saba Saba National Exhibition in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
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