Blessing Ngobeni

Blessing Ngobeni (b. 1985, Tzaneen, South Africa) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses painting, collage, sculpture, video animation, sound installations, and live performances. Informed by a rich tapestry of artistic influences including Surrealism, Dadaism, and Neo-Expressionism, his work serves as an honest critique of South Africa's socio-political landscape. Through large-scale paintings brimming with symbolism and narrative depth, he condemns the government's failures to fulfill post-Apartheid promises of equality, drawing from his own experiences and community struggles. Ngobeni’s art, deeply rooted in a quest for justice and freedom, invites rumination on power dynamics, privilege, and societal structures, urging us to reconsider our roles within them.

Mirror Soft Life reflects on social consciousness and the enduring impact of historical events that perpetuate oppressive systems, shaping the present and future experiences of Black individuals in an anti-Black world. Ngobeni states that, “we are haunted by memories of enslavement, land disposition, conquest, identity crisis, cultural erasure, missionary indoctrination, denial of citizenship, and labor exploitation. These are regimes of slavery, imperialism, colonialism, Apartheid, the underpinning racial capitalism, including Black suffering, which is synonymous with the Black experience.” In making postcolonialism the subject of his art, he critiques the tribulations of corruption, incompetence, and conspicuous consumption, perpetuating the continued dehumanization of Black bodies in our contemporary moment. His practice also intertwines textiles with classical furniture to create functional yet evocative works. He constructs loveseats, footstools, and chairs adorned with printed fabric featuring imagery drawn from various artworks. Inspired by the unsettling historical practice of using enslaved Africans' hair as stuffing for furniture, he delves into the complex layers of anti-Blackness inherent in vintage objects.

Artspace named Ngobeni one of the “most important African painters working today”. He won South Africa’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2020, and the exhibition is currently traveling throughout South Africa. In 2024, Ngobeni is a finalist for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize, which is open to public vote. He was also showcased in 2016 addition of Phaidon’s Vitamin P3. Ngnobeni's work is in noted public and private collections throughout Africa and the world including the Johannesburg Art Gallery and Perez Art Museum in Miami, and in Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s personal collections. He has participated in esteemed artist residency programs at the Headlands Center for the Arts and the Cleveland Foundation’s Creative Fusion. In 2016, he founded the Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize, aimed at nurturing young and emerging visual artists through a twelve-week studio residency in Johannesburg, South Africa. His solo booth presentation was highlighted in Frieze’s article, Memory and Material at Frieze Los Angeles 2024. He is currently exhibiting at the Floating Museum’s exhibition Rising Tides presented by The Hall Art and Technology Foundation as well as In Their Hands at Jenkins Johnson Gallery San Francisco. Ngobeni currently works and resides in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Jenkins Johnson Gallery will participate in Art Basel Miami Beach, December 8 - 10, 2023 Booth B31. We will feature artists that explore social and political issues of the African Diaspora by connecting past and current moments: Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Wadsworth Jarrell, Gordon Parks, Ming Smith, Patrick Alston, Adrian Burrell, Dewey Crumper, Lisa Corinne Davis, Violet Fields, Alex Jackson, Blessing Ngobeni, Gregory Rick, Enrico Riley, and Raelis Vasquez. Jenkins Johnson Gallery will be participating in the Kabinett sector with a solo presentation of works on paper by Mary Lovelace O'Neal, featuring her iconic Lampblack (1970's) and Desert Women (1990's) series. In the Lampblack drawings she layers black charcoal and pastel, allowing slivers of negative space to invade the surface. These drawings speak to her affair with an "uncluttered minimalist viewpoint", invoking both a cultural and aesthetic sentiment. In Desert Women series, Lovelace O'Neal portrays garments worn in the Sahara Desert in Egypt and the Atacama Desert in Chile. She studied with master printmaker James Lesene Wells and at The Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. Lovelace O'Neal creates based on feeling and perception, forming moments of fleeting light. Her work is in museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Baltimore Museum, DeYoung Museum, and Brooklyn Museum. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in Spring 2024.