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Untitled (Queen of Hearts), Billy (Buyisile) Mandindi; South Africa, 1993
MEDIUM Acrylic on canvas
DIMENSIONS 150 x 193 cm
ACQUISITION Gift from Professor Colin Bundy, South African historian and former Director of SOAS.
REFERENCE LDSAC 2021.2.8
Billy Buyisile Mandindi (also Mandini) (1967-2005) was born at Gugulethu, Cape Town, South Africa and died in 2005. The struggle against the apartheid regime, under which he grew up, defined his art like that of many other artists of his generation. He trained full-time from 1985-1986 at the Community Arts Project in Cape Town. Although his work often expressed the harsh realities of the Apartheid regime, his was a light and deft touch in which these themes are illuminated by the playful pictorial possibilities, imaginatively transforming the things he depicted in prints, paintings and installations. This painting resonates with the uncertainties and difficulties experienced during the transition to democracy, which was finally achieved in 1994. These uncertainties are alluded to in the menacing skeletons and masked individuals behind the contemplative central figure.
This is part of the SOAS Artwork & Object Collections. See more https://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/collections/
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