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 2024 Frieze Los Angeles solo presentation with Jenkins Johnson Gallery was highlighted in Frieze’s article, Memory and Material. Ngobeni currently works and resides in Johannesburg, South Africa.