Self Destruct

Provenance

Michael Obert Contemporary, Johannesburg, circa 2016.

Private Collection.

Notes

Throughout his career, Sam Nhlengethwa's ongoing Interiors series has evolved into a significant platform for the artist to honor various cultural icons, facilitating dialogues between them and his own artistic practice.¹ Through this series of collage-paintings Nhlengethwa delves into his profound love for jazz to honour cultural icons like Miriam Makeba and Ron Carter - figures of significant prominence in South Africa's cultural landscape. Reflecting on this, the artist shares: "In doing these tributes and the interiors I am taken down memory lane to a time when I was a set designer at SABC. There we were dealing with space - vacated space. The tributes ape that empty space, but with the hanging paintings of these specific individuals, they are injected with a sense of vibrancy."²

Earlier works from the Interiors series, dating back to the early 1990s, encapsulate this sense of emptiness, which the artist characterizes as a "distinct sense of loneliness one encounters as an artist working alone while family and friends are out living their lives."³

^1. Goodman Gallery, Landing: A Group Exhibition, online, https://www.goodman-gallery.com/store/shop?ref_id=48062, accessed 22 February 2024.

^2. Ocula (2020) Goodman Gallery Press Release for Interiors Continued, online, https://ocula.com/art-galleries/goodman-gallery/exhibitions/interiors-continued/, accessed 22 February 2024.

^3. Ibid.