Artist 196
Banele Khoza
Exploring Sexuality
Painting/ drawing
Banele Khoza (born 1994) is an artist from eSwatini Swaziland who resides in South Africa. His work explores human relations through motifs of love, gender norms and more. He specializes in painting, printmaking and digital art.
“I appreciate the freedom I get from living in South Africa, tackling gender norms and also the idea of painting. There is a rich culture and appreciation of the Arts in this country and it inspires me further. I would have been in a box if I was based in Swaziland – however living in South Africa has allowed me to create my own identity that knows of no boundaries,” says Khoza.
Romantic and dreamlike, his portraits allude to sensual fantasies underpinned by homoerotic desire mixed with feelings of vulnerability and incompleteness.
Khoza’s visual language examines the suppression of complex and diverse expressions of masculinity—an attempt to liberate the emotion between men trying to find love from each other in today’s filtered virtual world.
His work express a gentleness to his approach of exploring masculinity through his use of watercolor and choice of colours. I love how he combines abstracted elements with drawings with elements of text.
Sources Consulted:
https://www.artprintsa.com/Banele-Khoza-lithographs.html
https://zeitzmocaa.museum/artists/banele-khoza/
https://creativefeel.co.za/…/introducing-to-the-unknown-by…/