NHLANHLA NHLAPO 

(b. 1988, Frankfurt, Free State, South Africa)

Nhlapo earned a degree in Fine Art at Tshwane University of Technology specialising in painting. Nhlapo’s practice draws from the techniques of Dutch masters and Dutch landscape painting of the 17th century, placing it within the landscape of South Africa and his hometown of Frankfurt, and inhabiting it with images from his family and friends. Within his works, Nhlapo engages with the nature and cultural context of depiction in art history, the implicit and unacknowledged politics of trauma passed through the landscape, the trauma of colonization, and the loss and clash between modernity and tradition in family photographs.

Through his experience of personal everyday conflicts growing up in rural Free State and later moving to Gauteng and the City, Nhlapo seeks to create a personal narrative with this body of work, a symbolic longing to reconnect to the land of his ancestors.

Nhlapo was awarded the 2018 Unisa Academic Portrait Commission by Chairperson Mr. Simelane and the 2018 Artist Residency at Lacreusette in France Boussac with Louis Jansen van Vuuren. His first solo exhibition was with Lizamore Associates in 2019.