Moshekwa Langa | the artist

Incorporating every kind of material, he disfigures the official geographic maps recomposing a personal mythology. His use of a wide range of (mainly second-hand) materials is initially due to precarious living conditions and to “making the best of what you’ve got”, an economy of means transposed to the artistic field. Layered abstractions that recall the African landscape contain tattered fragments of South African maps that have been reorganized in unfamiliar, confusing and disquieting ways. They hold melancholy references to travel – leave-taking in particular. Moshekwa Langa retraces the fragile contours of a reinvented world. For the artist, the map is not an aesthetic or philosophical argument, but rather an identity issue…

He is a multi talented artist and is known for his innovative use of media such as video, paints,  found objects and collage…

Untitled Index drawing III, and other works

Incorporating maps and appropriated text, Langa’s drawings are charged with the sentimental voice of the émigré caught between new places and nostalgia, the familiar and the absurd…

`On the one hand I have the image of a perfidious trickster and on the other hand there is that earnest innocence that he has developed to a fine art.’