“My backgrounds often merge traditional African symbolism with modern illustration, reflecting my own lived experience between worlds, between softness and strength, visibility and introspection.”
Mpho David Mabotja is a South African contemporary visual artist born and raised in Ekurhuleni, where early exposure to both suburban and township life shaped his nuanced understanding of Black identity, visibility, and social categorisation. Navigating these parallel worlds offered him an unfiltered view of how Black people are perceived, by society at large and by one another across class and cultural lines. This duality is embodied in his use of both his names: Mpho, meaning “gift”, rooted in community and familiarity, and David, meaning “beloved”, adopted within corporate and professional spaces. By signing his work as Mpho David, he embraces the multiplicity of his lived experience and the layered identities that inform his practice.
Mabotja’s work is rooted in the celebration of melanated skin, African identity, and Black presence beyond narratives of struggle or survival. Deeply conscious of how Black bodies are often framed in visual culture, and informed by his own journey with sexuality and selfhood, his practice insists on representation that allows Black – and queer Black – bodies to exist fully, softly, and truthfully. This commitment led to his ongoing series, The Black Gaze, a body of work centred on reclaiming how Blackness is seen. The figures in these portraits meet the viewer with intentional, self-possessed gazes that require neither permission nor explanation, asserting dignity, humility, beauty, and quiet authority in place of spectacle or trauma.
“Stylistically, my work blends realistic portraiture with symbolic abstraction. I use deep tonal contrasts, gold accents, and layered textures to create emotional depth and movement. I work with multiple materials, including acrylic, ink, and mixed media, allowing the surface of the canvas to carry feeling, encouraging the viewer not only to look, but to feel the work.”