© Nonzuzo Gxekwa

Life is Beautiful

Nonzuzo Gxekwa

2019 — Johannnesburg, South Africa

About this series

Nonzuzo Gxekwa’s optic is loving. It’s not simply that she chooses to focus on moments of self love—the way people occupy themselves—but that in the taking, her subjects are never wholly circumscribed. There is always space to manoeuvre. The title of her exhibition, Life is Beautiful (2020), is not only a conscious decision to focus on that which brings joy, but an awareness of our agency in the construction thereof and its capacity to overcome. As described by Ashraf Jamal, photographs “negate chronology, they confect it, altering what we recall and what we imagine. They are dreaming tools, never facts … What matters is not the thing seen, but what it affirms in the moment of seeing.” text Sven Christian

 

© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa
© Nonzuzo Gxekwa

Photographer: Nonzuzo Gxekwa
Nationality: South African
Based in: Johannesburg, SA
Instagram: @nonzuzogxekwa

Nonzuzo Gxekwa (b. 1981) is a Johannesburg based photographer. Her approach to photography favours the everyday over the spectacular; sharing interesting and intimate moments through focusing the camera on what is around her as well as herself. Whether it is through street photography or the studio, her work explores the human condition in subtle and beautiful ways.
Collaboration is a crucial part of her practice, she has worked together with a number of photographers and artists in Johannesburg.
She is a current participant at the Jan Van Eyck Academy, Netherlands SOLO

EXHIBITIONS
2020 – Life is Beautiful, THK Gallery, Online Exclusive

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 – Kehinde Wiley’s SELF -ADDRESSED
2021 – 1-54 Paris at Christies
2020 – 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair
2020 – Theater Des Lebens, GAF Hannover, Germany
2019 – Yenza Kwenzeke, Underline Projects, Johannesburg
Point Blank: Photography and Activism, PH Centre, Cape Town
2017 – Black Excellence: Overexposed or Underexposed, Soweto Art Week, Johannesburg
2016 – She.Clix: The ‘Women’ Exhibition, Daville Baillie Gallery, Johannesburg,

COLLABORATIONS
2020 – The Mask Project with Pierre le Riche
2017 – Soul Songs: exploring themes of jazz and African spirituality, collaboration with Thokozani Mthiyane, Johannesburg
2015 – Carbon Copy, collaboration with Noncedo Mathibela, Johannesburg