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Neo Mahlangu (1992) is a visual artist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Following her passion for art, she made the switch from the Healthcare industry to become a trailblazer in the visual art industry. Her style is characterized by charcoal works with acrylic on canvas. She shows sober, powerful female heads in a sleek white surface with an almost mythical appearance.
“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 visual artist, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Following her passion for art, she made the switch from the Healthcare industry to become a trailblazer in the visual art industry.
Mahlangu has created work that has braced the walls of the ABSA Gallery and has taken part in group exhibitions hosted by international brands such as Afropunk and Absolut Vodka. She received the title as one of the Design Indaba Emerging Creatives in 2018 and was listed as one of the top ten ‘Young Gauteng’ creatives by 100% Design South Africa.
Mapping a genealogy of feminine expression; often inadequate and poorly identified, which constitutes womanhood located in a cultural, racial and political context is what concretely and constructively influences her art.
Her body of work is searching for depth and ways of navigating life connected to experiences of being a black woman invested in politics.
She writes, “in reality, I spend inordinate amounts of time doing political work and my art gives me a break from that, while it is important to interrogate these issues for the overall material benefit and security of women, it is exhausting and this space and the creating process really relieve me of these obligations.
This complex feminist sensibility is easily seen free stylistic expression that isn’t framed within the guidelines of fine art, it further reflects this safe spaces where I can work with passion and abandon. 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.”
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.
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