Artist Database

Nhlanhla Nhlapo (b. 1988) grew up in Frankfort in the Free State and moved to Pretoria to study Fine Arts at Tshwane University of Technology in 2015. His practice takes the techniques of the Dutch masters and seven-teenth-century Dutch landscape painting as a point of departure, situating them in the South African landscape — and in Frankfort in particular — and populating them with images from his family albums.

Nhlapo explores the politics of the ‘self’: his personal history read in an African and global context. The imagery deals with nostalgia, community, survival and decolonisation, juxtaposing portrait, interior, exterior and landscape to underline the fugitive nature of time. His skilled and compassionate portrayal of the people and places he draws and paints, in diffused and subtle colour harmonies, creates a mood of introspection, but also confronts the viewer with serious issues around land expropriation and the trauma and transformation of a community in post-apartheid South Africa.

From 2013 to 2018 Nhlapo showed in group exhibitions including the Pretoria Arts Association, Lizamore and Associates and the Turbine Art Fair, and in 2016 held a two-man show with Helena Hugo at Trent Gallery. He was a mentee in the Johannes Stegman Mentorship Programme from 2017 to 2019 under Jaco van Schalkwyk. In 2018 he presented a mini solo show at Woordfees, where he was nominated as one of three artists for special mention in the Visual Arts Programme, and collaborated with Louis Jansen van Vuuren during a residency. He has since returned to the RMB Latitudes Art Fair in 2023 and 2025. Alongside portrait commissions for private collectors and companies — most recently an academic portrait of the chairperson, Mr Simelane, for Unisa — his work is collected in South Africa, France, the United States and Germany.