Kindreds in Abstraction: Translations of African Consciousness and Culture

Artyli Gallery is excited to announce the opening of a new exhibition, ‘Kindreds in Abstraction’, on March 22nd at 11am. As the title suggests, the exhibition will foreground the art form of abstraction. The genre of abstraction has become prominent within contemporary African art, precisely because as Paul Klee explains - in times of uncertainty, artists turn toward abstraction for interpretation and sense-making of happenings in the world. Essentially, there arises a seeking for a medium that would allow unrestrained expression.

 

Portraiture and figuration have defined African art, because African artists both in Africa and the diaspora are often critiqued for not being political, for just making art for arts sake. However, abstraction has facilitated an alternative - a more covert reflection on the human condition and experience, particularly through patterns and symbols that speak on existential thematic concerns found in philosophy, politics and psychology. Abstraction can be said to be the consciousness of the artist made manifest. 

 

Writing on abstraction in his new book ‘African Art: The ARAK Collection’ (2025), South African art critic and cultural theorist Ashraf Jamal states that “If, prejudicially, it is supposed that abstraction is a rarefied ideal, and as such, quintessentially civilised, it follows that Africa and its artists, assigned an objectified content—one that can be seen and known from the outside, without depth, other than some menacing obscurity — might not be considered eligible, let alone capable, of exploring a more otiose and enigmatic world.”

 

The ‘Kindreds in Abstraction’ exhibition will feature intriguing abstract artworks by Samson Mnisi, Layziehound Coka, Thokozani Mthiyane, Sibusiso Ngwazi, Asanda Kupa, and Hussein Salim, in addition to sculptures by Talia Goldsmith, that will each and yet collectively inspire dialogue around topical questions about the world.

 

Through pattern, colour, and a play with lines, Samson Mnisi conveys  his textured symbolic meaning. Mnisi’s artworks, although abstract, have an identity that can best be described as otherworldly -  holding the artistically alchemical, and spiritually emotive concurrently.

 

The works of abstraction by Layziehound Coka hold spiritual undertones, philosophical questions and reflections of time, with a diverse colour palette, shifting between the luminous and the dark. 

 

Thokozani Mthiyane relays narrative through layers of texture, colour and African cultural symbolism simultaneously, owed to the incorporation of discarded found objects and earthly elements of soil and wind. 

 

Ngwazi makes use of very subtle and veiled forms of repetitive, yet highly refined mark-making that are an abstract representation of his worldview, alongside landscapes, waterscapes, shapes and symbols.

 

The artworks of Asanda Kupa capture an important period of reconciliation in South Africa’s political history as he uses figurative yet abstract forms to reflect on community and popular  protest. 

 

Hussein Salim creates bright patterned abstract works that are highly symbolic of African  mythology, migration and the diaspora, hereby using art as a tool to create a dialogue about different cultures. 

 

Talia Goldsmith offers commentary on the human condition, relayed specifically through metaphor and materials that engage with language, spirituality and sound.