Notes

The artwork Bullfighter (Capitalist) formed part of the exhibition As If You Care, held at Gallery MOMO in 2015, the artist’s third solo exhibition. In an interview in Between 10 and 5, Ngobeni explains how the exhibition was inspired by the emotions felt when witnessing how people are still slaves to capitalism ‘as colonialism intended it to be.’¹

‘I have found that most people act as if they care about the greater good, particularly those in power, but in reality they don’t. They are pushing a personal agenda by manipulating the ideas of socialism in order to convince those who are desperate to support and celebrate them.’²

Ngobeni’s use of mixed media and found objects allows him to have a conversation with the materials on the canvas and he describes his work as a game that takes the viewer on a journey: ‘If you win, the work becomes a masterpiece. If you don’t, then you have to revisit or play a different game.’³

Blessing Ngobeni was the winner of the Reinhold Cassirer art award in 2012.

 

1. Jessica Hunkin. (2015) Layered with Meaning: Blessing Ngobeni’s Mixed Media Collages, [Online] Available: Between 10 and 5. Available: https://10and5.com/2015/07/23/layered-with-meaning-blessing-ngobenismixed-media-collages/ [7 December 2018].
2. Mapmyway. (2015) Blessing Ngobeni ‘As If You Care’ at MOMO, [Online] Available: https://mapmyway.co.za/blessing-ngobeni-as-if-youcare-at-momo/ [7 December 2018].
3. ibid 1.

Exhibited

Gallery MOMO, Cape Town, Blessing Ngobeni: As If You Care, August 2015.

Literature

Danny Shorkend. (2015) ‘As If You Care: A Solo Exhibition by Blessing Ngobeni’, Art Africa, issue 1, September, pages 174 - 176. Illustrated in colour on page 175.