Simphiwe Ndzube

Simphiwe Ndzube (born. 1990 in Hofmeyr, Eastern Cape, South Africa) is a South African painter of Xhosa origin currently living and working in Los Angeles. Quotes The work is so much based on the openness. I do not judge my work. I bring to it what comes naturally, and I allow it as the finish goes to be whatever it’s going to be. And I think what ends up happening is there is something that comes naturally without dictating and controlling it and wanting to say a specific thing or be a specific thing. Episode 22: Simphiwe Ndzube(5 February 2021) For me, channeling artworks is an intuitive process, an openness to travel through unknown and often dark places to bring about new lives and stories. The lives within the work are not creations of mine—they are willed to existence by forces beyond my control. I don’t question the souls I’m told to create. They come from a higher power, an inner consciousness, or a combination of the two. Artmaking, for me, is like the work of a Sangoma, or healer, who finds beauty in the macabre, clarity in chaos, answers in questions, and questions in answers. Simphiwe Ndzube: Isithunywa so Moya | A Messenger of the Spirit, CIRRUS, (3 December 2022) I can kind of play around with materials and pull things around … you know, kind of go back and forth. It’s not premeditated but an intention to arrive [at and] to make work that feels like it is saying something. I made these portraits as a way to kind of … add my people into my universe. Artist Simphiwe Ndzube Speaks on Breaking from Tradition, THE HEIGHTS, (11 November 2021) Everything has kind of flipped upside down I’m learning to walk on my hands and feet, so to speak. I think that we all are. Things have really escalated since the public uprisings around the police killings, really, the public lynchings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. For me, as a person in this country with a green card, it’s been tricky to participate; I do not want to have my time here jeopardized. I’ve been focusing on taking care of myself, making the work, and doing the bit that I can. Doing this thing on your own has been exceptionally hard. I wondered if it would have been better to be in lockdown in South Africa with my family, where you can’t get things such as alcohol or cigarettes, or here in Los Angeles, California. Ultimately, I decided to stay here because of all of the work that I have to do and the kind of access that I need for materials. I’ve kept in regular contact with friends and family in South Africa, and I’ve exchanged COVID-related information with them as it develops. I bought plants the other day. It’s not the first time I’ve done that, but I like waking up every day and watering the plants while having coffee. I have been working, but it’s been a good time for processing, trying to understand what this moment means, as well as observing and being attentive to other people. For the first time, it feels like people really see each other. When COVID-19 began I was stuck in a tiny studio apartment that I had been wanting to move out of, and I lost access to my art studio downtown. I have upcoming shows and family to feed in Africa, so I needed to find a place to make art. First, I found an alternative space to work; it was a small studio down the street where I started making drawings for a children’s coloring book (with artists such as Virgil Abloh and Nina Chanel Abney) published by Library Street Collective. Then, two months after the start of quarantine, the building where my studio is opened back up. I realized that I had an interest in continuing to make drawings; I had always made these, but quarantine encouraged me to focus and take them more seriously. A lot of people are demanding justice; so much so, that it has felt as though the threat of COVID is less urgent than the reaction to the taking of life by very toxically masculine white supremacists. In New York, the police have been using COVID as an excuse to target Black and Brown bodies, and the response of rage has found its way to the street. With less capitalist activity due to stay-at-home orders, people have time to really express how they feel about the system. Art In Uncertain Times: Simphiwe Ndzube Makes a New Connection with the Body in Los Angeles, JUXTAPOZ(3 June 2020) External links Category:Painters from South Africa Category:Living people Category:Xhosa people Category:1990 births