Survival Tactics

In this series of works, Njabulo Hlophe explores the use of wood by means of wooden sculptural reliefs made with mixed found media such as bottle caps and nails to add an additional textural element to the works. The sculptures represent the artists mindset about approaching the age of 27 and makes use of the sculptural forms to create emotional placemarkers and journal notes to remember as they grow more firmly into manhood.

The artist uses the work to engage with the plurality of personhood and how each of us are merely a culmintion of all of these thoughts, faces and experiences, and therefore should be observed more holistically.

This is a very cerebral body of work, each word, each stroke, each stitch, is merely an expression of an emotion from a trance like state that leads each piece to the next.