Written by Emme Raus, contributor
Guest speaker Sam Nhlengethwa gave a lecture overviewing his artwork entitled “Life, Jazz and Lots of Other Things” in SCAD’s events space, fourth floor of building C at 6 p.m. on Oct. 2.
The artist talk was held in coordination with Atlanta Celebrates Photography 2014 and followed by a reception of Nhelengethwa’s work in Trois Gallery and Gallery 1600.
Nhlengethwa is an accomplished contemporary artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa who specifies in oil and acrylic painting and printmaking. He has spent over 20 years working in a variety of other mediums including but not limited to etchings, mosaics, collages, lithographs and tapestries.
Nhlengethwa’s work premiered at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah as his first solo museum exhibition in the United States earlier this year. The success of the display led to the SCAD Atlanta premiere Thursday, Oct. 2, curated by Laurie Ann Farrell, SCAD executive director of exhibitions.
The burgeoning artist was born in 1955 and raised by his grandmother. He studied Fine Arts in Rorke’s Drift, Natal, a city and region in South Africa. Over the years he has worked at a synthetic diamond factory, as a full-time set designer at the South African Broadcasting Corporation and finally as a full-time artist at Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa.
The show featured an eclectic selection of the artist’s practice and themes. Most of his works portray scenes from South African daily life, jazz music and racial segregation issues in bold earth tones and bright pigments. Nhlengethwa’s inspirations include: the working class, his eldest brother and jazz musician, his grandmother, the civil rights movement in the U.S. 1950s and 1960s and the apartheid in South Africa from 1948 to 1994.
One particularly striking piece made in 1990 and entitled “It left him cold,” portrayed the death of Steve Biko, an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, as a collage using pencil and charcoal on paper.
In addition to creating visual art, Nhlengethwa enjoys collecting vintage cars, cooking with his wife and collecting and listening to a broad variety of jazz albums. After the lecture, SCAD arranged an instrumental jazz band to preside over the reception as well as finger food catering.