"I like to project positivity into my work. I am always moving forward, never looking back."
Thando Makhosini Ngwenya was born in KwaFelekisi, Amanzimtoti in KwaZulu-Natal in 1992, where he was raised by his grandmother. Ngwenya credits her with teaching him the most significant lessons of his life. At the age of 14, Ngwenya moved to Soweto, Johannesburg, where he first lived with his mentor, and later his sister, and started his self-guided art practice.
Ngwenya specialises in watercolours with pen and ink, and has lately started experimenting with acrylic. He draws inspiration from the rich web of diversity that surrounds him in South Africa, and in Soweto in particular. Ngwenya is an independent artist with a style that does not emulate any other artists in his orbit. This quest for confidence in his voice and work is expressed through his use of motivational slogans and text.
Ngwenya's style employs mixed media, including collage and comic strips, creating a layered end result, reminiscent of street pole ads where the visual effect is one of many images and lines of text layered over one another in time – it represents the moment where the image is always semi-finished, but also eternally incomplete.
