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New work by Colbert Mashile at the NSA, a show exploring traditional indigenous beliefs occupying the NSA ‘Tsya Ka Mafuri’ (Lurking Behind) presents new work by Colbert Mashile.

Presented in association with Gallery on the Square, the NSA is hosting Colbert Mashile, a young artist living and working in Johannesburg.

Mashile’s work engages traditional circumcision and initiation rituals. Coming from a place of powerful customs (Bushbuckridge in the Northern Province), Mashile underwent circumcision at the age of ten with his peers.

As an artist he has developed a visual language that is partially an attempt to come to terms with the conflicting emotional results of the experience: the expectation by society to take pride in traditional ritual in contrast to the physiological trauma inflicted through this process.

Mashile says that he decided to heal himself, by “dealing with these experiences in my artworks whereby I try to use psychological images which I feel comfortable with in an attempt to replace horrific scenes, sights and sounds of the initiation ritual. I am not necessarily advocating the demise of the practice, but express my individual feeling which I believe would be shared by others who have endured the same”.

Mashile graduated with a BA in Fine Arts at the University of Witwatersrand in 2000, and since then has exhibited widely in South Africa. Represented in major corporate and public collections, including

the Mandela Foundation, Nedcor and MTN Corporation, amongst others, his work was seen most recently on the group exhibition ‘Show Me Home’ at the Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Showing for the first time in KwaZulu Natal this is his second solo exhibition.

The exhibition is made possible through a generous grant from the National Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund and will be opened by Eric

Apelgren. Opens: August 19 at 6pm

Closes: September 7

 

NSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood

Keywords: Colbert Mashile, Exhibition, Mashile, NSA, traditional rituals