“My work explores the dangers of Johannesburg while reflecting its beauty through its architecture and cityscape.”
Themba Benedict Khumalo (born 1987) is an artist from Soweto, Johannesburg. He graduated from Artist Proof Studio with a Design Foundation Certificate in printmaking, from there continuing on to a professional printmaking development course under the sponsorship of Pinpoint One.
Khumalo is interested in exploring different mediums, such as charcoal drawings and painting, with work inspired by everyday life. His visuals are stimulated by events he witnesses in the city on a daily basis, such as people’s everyday struggles, prospects and desires. He documents his interaction with the city as both an outsider and a city dweller. This dual tension is evident in his work; as he takes note of people who have come to the city in search of the unknown. This is reflective in his work through his intense, dark mark-marking and subtle textures, which evoke specific moods and emotions.
Khumalo’s work reflects the social, political and spiritual landscape in current South Africa, and the understanding of land as identity. Using current news headlines as an entry into some of the injustice the landscape observes, these meanings are made visible through the nuances expressed in the drawings, painting with coffee to mimic the earth and soil tones and use of vernacular titles. With the attempt to saturate the land, the artist looks at a piece of land measured through the size of the drawings. These renditions portray pieces of land as witnesses to the dispossession, illegal occupation as protest, loss of hope, and yet, through the artist’s depiction, the land becomes a place of refuge, a space of faith and healing.