Menu
Neo Mahlangu (1992) is a young, self-taught emerging artist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Following her passion for design and art, she made the switch from the Healthcare industry in 2017 to pursue a career as a digital illustrator and fine artist with her debut as a finalist for the Cassirer Welz Award.
“I would rather capture women as divine or mythical sirens, feeling, living, warning and residing in their soft power without the influence of men and being outdone by the whims of men.”
Neo Mahlangu (1992) is a young, self-taught emerging artist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Following her passion for design and art, she made the switch from the Healthcare industry in 2017 to pursue a career as a digital illustrator and fine artist with her debut as a finalist for the Cassirer Welz Award.
Since debuting her artworks at an August House Open Studio (Johannesburg, 2017), Mahlangu has shown regularly at galleries domestically and beyond, in Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. In 2019, she made her art fair debut at the Latitudes Art Fair (Johannesburg). More recently, she has been nominated for several awards, amongst others by the Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) for the ImpACT Awards for Young Professionals (2020). Her works have been included in the University of Johannesburg and MMArthouse collections.
In her work, she comments on womanhood as defined by the cultural, racial and political context of South African daily reality. In her charcoal with acrylic works, she shows sober, powerful female heads in a sleek white surface with an almost mythical appearance.
She writes, “I would rather capture women as divine or mythical sirens, feeling, living, warning and residing in their soft power without the influence of men and being outdone by the whims of men. It is self-asserting project so as to not experience life in a reduction – one informed by patriarchal impositions where men subsume the voices and ideas of women within a critical rubric that reinforces male supremacy.”
Barcelona Contemporary Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain
Identify With Me, Latitudes Art Fair, Johannesburg
Undertow, OpenArtExchange, Schiedam, The Netherlands
2020
Venice International Art Fair, Venice, Italy
Ambiguous Group Exhibition, MMArtHouse, Johannesburg
2019
South African Mint #SA25, Latitudes Art Fair, Johannesburg
Voices and Choices, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg
FirstRand group exhibition, MMArtHouse, Johannesburg
Top 10 Young Gauteng’s Exhibition 100% Design South Africa, Johannesburg
MID group exhibition, AGOG Gallery, Johannesburg
Bibliotheca, Bag Factory Artist Studios, Johannesburg
2018
Continuing Conversations, University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg
Winter Group Exhibition, Julie Miller Art Gallery, Johannesburg
Creative Portraits group exhibition, 100% Design South Africa
Bogaleng Exhibition, Braamfontein, Johannesburg
Group Exhibition, Design Indaba Emerging Creatives, Cape Town
Talking to Deaf Ears group Exhibition, ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg (c)
Group Exhibition, Absolut One Source Festival of Creativity, Johannesburg
2017
Untitled Group Exhibition, St. Laurient Art Gallery, Brooklyn, Pretoria
Ringa! Afropunk x Umuzi Group Exhibition, Johannesburg and Cape Town
Art Alive Exhibition, Waterkloof High School, Pretoria
OpenArtExchange is an independent international art gallery that aims to stimulate and connect promising contemporary visual artists from non-Western countries (particularly Africa, South America and Asia) with the western world of arts and culture.
© 2020 All rights reserved | VAT NL858728539B01 | CoC 71471367 | Member of NGA