From the publisher:

"Replica Ever Sang showcases the rich visual and conceptual apparatuses of Blessing Ngobeni’s distinctive work. Winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award (in Visual Arts) for 2020, Ngobeni makes use of accumulation and juxtaposition on his latest canvases, with numerous bold elements jostling for our attention, which he uses in order to question the legacy of history in South Africa, where art and politics have long been considered close companions.

Often large and unruly, the paintings exemplify in their absurdist positioning of fragments (entwined figures, a rudimentary vehicle, birds, slogans, a devil’s head) the complexity of the post-apartheid South African narrative and, by extension, of other post-colonial African nations. The excitement and hope of independence have given way to despair and disappointment – Replica Ever Sang’s distorted figures and unabashed phrases (“They slaughtered so many of my kind”; “Knocked down by the system”) characterise this.

Ngobeni’s preoccupation with the past is, however, connected to his questioning of the present and concern for the future. It is through such attentive interrogation that we move closer to figuring out the meanings of freedom."

21 x 27 cm | 38 pages | softcover

Blessing Ngobeni was born in 1985 in a small rural town of Tzaneen in Limpopo. At the age of ten, he moved to Johannesburg where, after a tumultuous decade, he entered the contemporary art scene. Bringing with him a unique style and a critique of political regimes, Ngobeni finds in the corruption, incompetence and duplicity of the current South African ruling elite a persistent subject.