“My focal point is the emergence of reality, through the use of charcoal and pastels, to tell the untold story of my journey."
Walter Fumani Maluleke is a visual artist from South Africa’s Limpopo province, hailing from a marginalised village called Thomo, in Giyani. Maluleke specialises in charcoal and pastel, and he draws inspiration from his daily life, where women and children are often central.
Maluleke grew up as the second of five children in a single-parent family, where basic survival was a daily struggle. These childhood experiences shaped Maluleke’s outlook on life, and influences his artist’s gaze: “Our mothers and sisters are the ones who take care of us as children, while our fathers were not there. As a child from a marginalized village, I learned how to approach life in different ways, due to playing and sharing with other kids and appreciating what they had.”
Much of Maluleke’s work is informed by a search for origin, for roots – a quest that must often be taken alone, as significant links in the generational chain are missing, or expressly cut away. The subjects of his pieces are seldom passive, there is a throughline of action and movement that ties the scenes together. Maluleke also holds fast to a vision of expansion and recognition for artists from rural settings, advancement which he believes will trickle back to the broader community, and specifically, the women who raised and nurture these artists: “I harbour dreams of an explosion of American and European tourists to Africa to our artworks, and thereby uplift our rural grannies, who toil day in and day out to produce the life we have here.”
