Andrew Ntshabele
Multilayered Memories 1, 2023
Acrylic on vintage documents
206 x 275 x 4 cm
The Turbine Art Fair (TAF) is a vibrant art fair that annually showcases artworks by established and emerging contemporary African artists who are each immensely talented in their own right. The Turbine Art Fair provides a creative space that is dually inclusive and immersive, providing seminal moments in celebration of African art and culture.
Artyli Gallery is excited to announce that it will be exhibiting a solo exhibition of artworks by Andrew Ntshabele titled “Multilayered Memories” at the Turbine Art Fair.
The creative process of Andrew Ntshabele centres on an active engagement with the archive. The archive is a contributor to public awareness. The narration of history begins within and through the archive, hence the archive is an imperative site of remembrance. To be included in the community archive is to experience an embracing sense of representational belonging. Contrastingly, to be isolated from the archive is to encounter a profound form of violent historical erasure, which in essence is an existence of absence, left unrecognised and ungrieved.
The series of works that will be exhibited capture the distinct style of Andrew Ntshabele that merge archival assemblages of collage and figurative painting, to create moments of substance that are historical yet futuristic, for generations both young and old. Ntshabele’s works conjure receptive reflection; juxtaposing divisions of the past while advocating for unity in the present and the future.
The relationship between Andrew Ntshabele and Artyli Gallery dates back to a period when Ntshabele was in university and to one of the first locations of Artyli Gallery in Stanley street, Johannesburg. Andrew Ntshabele has grown alongside Artyli Gallery during his artistic career through a reciprocal relationship characterised by nurture and connection of Spirit.