Lesego Forbes
Lesego Forbes (b. 2005) is a South African artist living and working in Johannesburg. Working with charcoal as his main medium, he explores moments of negotiation and tension through the body and its engagement with material. His practice is concerned with paying careful attention to the ways in which material demands of the body through processes of drawing, writing and assemblage. His conceptual installational tableaux work grapples with practical ideas of building, the processes concerned with manually making something. By engaging with the objects and understanding how they behave naturally and how he can manipulate them, Forbes constructs moments he calls pockets of feeling where the material of the objects carries out an emotion, reaching outside of itself.
His materials span across a range of material such as; concrete, cling wrap, gypsum board, fiberglass, newsprint, wood, etc. Forbes’ instances are rooted in the seen and the sensed, concerned with possessing the audience in a moment of questioning, presenting them into a sort of limbo. He understands surfaces and found materials as bodily gestures; as permeable, as hard or soft, as flexible, as sensitive, as skin. He utilises his writing in his practice as a way of thinking through the work as well as a tool for conceptualising.
Forbes has participated in a few group shows in Johannesburg over the years, namely; to, fail to (2026), shifting figures (2025) as part of an initiative by the GALA Queer Archive. He is currently completing his undergraduate studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, acquiring a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts.
Lesego Forbes (b. 2005) is a South African artist living and working in Johannesburg. Working with charcoal as his main medium, he explores moments of negotiation and tension through the body and its engagement with material. His practice is concerned with paying careful attention to the ways in which material demands of the body through processes of drawing, writing and assemblage. His conceptual installational tableaux work grapples with practical ideas of building, the processes concerned with manually making something. By engaging with the objects and understanding how they behave naturally and how he can manipulate them, Forbes constructs moments he calls pockets of feeling where the material of the objects carries out an emotion, reaching outside of itself.
His materials span across a range of material such as; concrete, cling wrap, gypsum board, fiberglass, newsprint, wood, etc. Forbes’ instances are rooted in the seen and the sensed, concerned with possessing the audience in a moment of questioning, presenting them into a sort of limbo. He understands surfaces and found materials as bodily gestures; as permeable, as hard or soft, as flexible, as sensitive, as skin. He utilises his writing in his practice as a way of thinking through the work as well as a tool for conceptualising.
Forbes has participated in a few group shows in Johannesburg over the years, namely; to, fail to (2026), shifting figures (2025) as part of an initiative by the GALA Queer Archive. He is currently completing his undergraduate studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, acquiring a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts.
