Moshekwa Langa. Relatives

About

Growing up in a semi-independent and often ignored country within South Africa, Langa moved to the Netherlands early in his life. From here he continued to interrogate and map histories both personal and collective.

Relatives, Langa’s first exhibition with Blain|Southern, focusses on wall-based works of various forms. His collages comprise layers of newsprint and found imagery, often pixelated and distorted beyond recognition. Abstract patterns and figurative images are painted and drawn, then stretched and twisted by layers of adhesive tape and studio detritus.

However, as Sean O’Toole states in Frieze magazine, naming or classifying the material forms Langa’s work takes is irrelevant. ‘I am simply producing things’ says the artist, ‘if I had to explain what I do to someone, I would say I make kind of dreamscapes…I try to record aspects of waking and sleeping time’.