Mbali Tshabalala

To dub Mbali Tshabalala a feminist is to simplify the issue. For her, black womanhood is both hammer and anvil, an inspirational weapon and an archetypal trope. As a printmaker and painter, Tshabalala straddles mediums and objectives.

Attuned to the appeal of stylised black iconography, she is also alert to the fact that art – as a representational system – cannot wholly grasp the rich complexity of Black Life. Neither its spiritual dimension, familial culture of interdependency, embodied in the culture of Ubuntu, or the rights of women therein.

In her works, she demonstrates the ability to move between the iconic and the real, the ideal and the mortal realms.

This makes her art suggestive, evocative, tender, probing. If the immediate impact of her works is graphic, there is also a deeper reach, because, fundamentally, Mbali Tshabalala’s art is consolatory and therapeutic – restful to the eye, becalming to the soul.