Artist Database

Kgaugelo Rakgwale’s work explores black womanhood and the intersection of knowledge and experience by processing the influence socio-cultural factors have on identity. Consisting of emotive portraiture, her work moves interchangeably between the various disciplines of photography, experimental filmmaking and digital fine line art. Since 2020, Rakgwale has focused mainly on themes of grief, disconnection and self-empowerment. In her most recent work, she subtly interrogates the process and tradition of bereavement by deconstructing the past and creating a new fiction of reality as a way of channelling restorative healing. Her monochromatic digital fine line work takes a refreshing look at key African cultural references from a woman’s perspective.

A LISOF Commercial Fashion Design Graduate, Rakgwale was part of Design Indaba’s 2018 Class of Emerging Creatives, was one of State of the Art Gallery Award’s 2018 top 40 and Absa l’Atelier art competition’s 2018 top 100. She has exhibited works at Turbine Art Fair TAF Paper, and Forme Femine Art Diaspora Dial. “I use photography to record time, and digital line work to trace back and process the pivotal points that exist in this history of my own making," she says.