Simphiwe Ndzube | Stiff Pap 2024

Simphiwe Ndzube is from Hofmeyr, Eastern Cape, and lives and works in Los Angeles, California, and Cape Town, South Africa. He has a BA Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.

​Ndzube’s work is characterized by a fundamental interplay between objects, media and two-dimensional surfaces; stitching together a subjective account of the Black experience in past and present-day South Africa from a mythological perspective. Recent exhibitions include Isithunywa so Moya | Messenger of the Spirit, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2022, solo); Masemola Road, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town (2022); and Oracles of the Pink Universe, Denver Art Museum, Denver USA (2021, solo). His work is collected by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Denver Art Museum; Musée d’art Contemporain de Lyon, France; Iziko South African National Gallery, South Africa; Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, South Africa; Rubell Museum, and many others.

Narrative influences include Ben Okri, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, and Zakes Mda. In particular, Ndzube highlights Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community by Wendy B Faris and Lois Parkinson Zamora which describes magical realism as "a mode suited to exploring—and transgressing—boundaries, whether the boundaries are ontological, political, geographical or generic. [It] facilitates the fusion, or coexistence, of possible worlds, spaces, [and] systems that would be irreconcilable in other modes."