Portraits of Absentees: Mbali Dhlamini and the Aesthetics of Withdrawal

Mbali Dhlamini, Bugubedu II, 2020 © Mbali Dhlamini, Courtesy Sakhile & Me, Frankfurt.

Read the full text here: https://www.sakhileandme.com/exhibitions/mbali-dhlamini-go-bipa-mpa-ka-mabele-2022.htm

Portraits of Absentees: Mbali Dhlamini and the Aesthetics of Withdrawal

by Nadine Isabelle Henrich

In her artistic practice Mbali Dhlamini embarks herself in an ongoing search for points of contact with pre-colonial identities and spirits. Her search manifests in a spectrum of ex-periences in painting, photography, video, and installation.

A monochrome-black pictorial background that absorbs the gaze is her signature motif, consistently appearing in her work since 2013. Dhlamini's portraits, in contrast to genre's definition, persist without a physical presence: clothes, like empty shells, hint at the former existence of historical protagonists.

Dhlamini works with an aesthetic of withdrawal. Her works attest to an ongoing, internal conversation with past and present, visual landscapes and archives. Her imagery revolves around the question of self, revealed beneath layers of imposed "Western" religion and pushed to emancipate the black female body from the colonial gaze, focusing on indigenous garments and inscribed layers of refusal. (Excerpt)

The text was commissioned as part of the first solo show of Mbali Dhlamini in Germany, 3 March - 9 April 2022, at Sakhile and Me Gallery in Franfurt.