In her paintings, constructed through natural pigments, Nozuko Madokwe revels in the earth (umhlaba in isiXhosa) as an expressive visual form itself. Her abstract compositions are the result of multiple layerings over the surface of the canvas. They may suggest figures, landscapes or gestural marks, but edge consistently towards an abstraction rooted in organic forms. Her practice, together with her regard for indigenous knowledge around natural earth-mediums, reflects the ubiquity of umhlaba and the corresponding symbolic prevalence contained in geographic environments.

Gathering her materials by hiking the surrounding mountains, Madokwe processes the raw earth and combines the resultant pigment with various natural mediums to create paint.

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Executed with a gestural vocabulary of smudging, folding, and scattering, her paintings invoke the rhythms of geological, spiritual, and sonic movements in order to, in the words of the artist, “redocument certain histories… exploring them by how we express and have expressed ourselves through colour.” In revisiting these histories, Madokwe offers a presentation of earth in communion with the beauty and harmony the artist finds in studying indigenous visual languages.

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For Madokwe, her paintings are enacted as a performance of honour – lifting the earth from the ground to the wall and reconfiguring its substrates in deference for the ancient technologies, techniques and knowledges contained in the earth itself.

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Nozuko Madokwe was born in 1983 in Cape Town. She grew up in the Eastern Cape, South Africa and various parts of the country. She currently lives and works in Cape Town.

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Selected group exhibitions include Brundyn Gallery, Cape Town (2015), Chosen Works, University of Johannesburg Gallery (2019); Home is Where the Art Is, Zeitz MOCCA, Cape Town (2020); Creative Academy Exhibition, Cape Town (2022). Live painting and music performances have been hosted at the Homecoming Centre, Cape Town (2016); in collaboration with I-Phupho le kaBiko, Chimurenga, Cape Town (2021); in collaboration with I’Bhunga the Council, Bertha House, Cape Town (2023), Infecting the City, Cape Town (2023).

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