Review Feature: South African-born Mbuyisa Maphalala | Abstract artist

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Published: 4 December 2008

South African-born Mbuyisa Maphalala, came to London four years ago to follow his dream

Shape of a life lived for sharing

DINERS at the Mango Room in Camden Town might not notice them straight away, but once you see Mbuyisa Maphalala’s vibrant, abstract paintings they are hard to ignore.
The South African artist engraves geometrical shapes, motifs and symbols onto his acrylic-daubed canvases in homage to the traditional Swazi beadwork of his late grandmother, Gogo.
His work has traditional foundations tempered with modernity: glimpses of photographs from “captured moments” around the city, fragments of magazines and found objects mix with hessian and earth from his native land.
These are Maphalala’s attempts to express the ritual of the everyday, the concerns of history and politics, and the cultural observations of a migrant who came to British shores – Peckham, specifically – four years ago.
Maphalala, who held his first exhibition while still at high school, left Johannesburg with his wife and five-year-old child to follow his dream to be an artist.
“I was offered a chance to study at college but I couldn’t get a sponsorship. The government wouldn’t sponsor an art course. They regarded it as something that wasn’t going to benefit anyone,” he explains.
When he is not painting he is returning the favour, teaching arts and crafts to pensioners.
It’s fitting employment for a man whose name in Swazi means “sharing a skill you’ve learned with others”.
SIMON WROE
• The Mango Room, 10-12 Kentish Town Road, NW1.020 7482 5065

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