Cityscape series
The Cityscape series by Sabelo Mkhaliphi shows African Women and gives the viewer an insight into their lives. Here the artist explains more about what drives him, where he came from and also where he is heading.
I was inspired by my mother
I was inspired by my mother who effortlessly worked had to make sure that we grow up to be better man that we are today, me and my brothers. And all the women who live under the poverty line. That made me to look at other women and how they were living their lives. What I found was shocking for me because I realised that they had so many issues around them.
As an artist I have been looking at finding a way to tell what women go though everyday of their lives. Then my inspiration grew when I saw the reflections on the buildings, on car and any other thing that reflected.
I then decided to combine the two, the women and the sunglass reflection to better tell their my story.
The story behind my work
The story behind my work is divided in two, the social issues and inner issues that women face, yet the two subjects make up one picture because they are both interconnected in a certain way.
The social issues would be things that women have to face while trying to achieve their dream and little do they know that there is so much that they have to go through to get to the top, they face rejection, haters, their bosses, friends, relatives, society, who make their lives difficult, as such that causes them to have doubts, fear, guilt and have to fight with there ego’s aswell.
The four paintings displayed here from the Cityscape series by Sabelo Mkhaliphi are currently available in our Gallery. We want to support Sabelo by bringing his work the the attention of our audience and hope you apperciate what he is doing.
My work is about capturing the essence
of hope for women.
Interestingly while I was working on my themes to try and understand what I wanted to convey to people is that I came across information from the likes of Carl Jung, Dr Bruce Lipton and so many others. They talk about shadow work, which simply talks about the split that takes place in our minds (the conscious and subconscious or the unconscious mind).
The act of self rejection. I got to learn that people have the conscious aspect of themselves that they are not aware of, so the human shadow is the aspect of the consciousness that they are not aware of. It contains negative emotions and low self esteem, it is how people are conditioned by people around them to a point that they loose who they truly are just so that they can feel loved and or accepted. denying and suppressing negative emotions go to your subconscious mind they don’t disappear, they later show up in life.
It's about self awareness
It’s about consciously doing the work of becoming conscious of what has become unconscious. It’s about self awareness, it’s also about the spiritual and sociological awareness. Being aware of your shadow. So I thought to my self that this fits perfectly well to my work because I talk about inner scars of a woman and that would be things that happend to someone that still affect them in the future. I talk about inner society and that would be things that go through a person’s mind, the clash between the good and bad. Positive and negative and so on.
I talk about the countless wounds of a woman signifying countless times she has been broken but still finds strength to keep on moving. My work is about capturing the essence of hope for women.
The Cityscape series by Sabelo Mkhaliphi shows us an insight into the lives of African women, read how the artist explains in his own words here.
What I want people to see in my work
What I want people to see in my work is that the reflections they see is on the sunglasses is a metaphor for what is happening within them.
I want people to look at women and ask themselves what’s happening inside them so that we can better understand how they feel and what they go through.
I want people to look at my work and reflect on their own lives because the mirror reflects it doesn’t define, so you define and the biggest enemy is you.
I also want people to look at my work and see that beauty is not just a look its internal, beauty is your personality how you carry yourself, what you are and who you are.
The surface is not important it is what is inside that is important.
How my work relates to African women
How my work relates to African women life experiences is that most women go to big cities in search for better fortunes. Here in South Africa, Johannesburg is a place of many opportunities for many people. So I reflect the city life in the eyes of women as they go in the morning to try again a better life for tomorrow. My work relate to African women because African women are the ones who still suffer the most and who work the hardest to make ends meet.
I’m working more on developing my story to perfectly relate to what is happening in the lives of women in Africa. There’s so much that can be said about the struggles and achievements of women.
What you can expect from me in the future is more work that directly speaks about women’s issues. Im also working on trying to find a better platform to tell and create awareness on gender based issues. To be the voice of the voiceless through my work and to share as much information as I can when it comes to the uplifting of women.
My theme is still work in progress, I’m still working on fusing my narrative work and paintings to be one thing. I hope all this information will give you an idea of the body of my work.
The artist and his work
Through the words of the artist, as you can read on this page, one gets a better understanding of his inspiration and motivation.
We hope you enjoy his work as much as we do.
Please contact us directly on info@nwabisa.com if you have any questions regarding his work, availability or even when you would like to have a special piece made by Sabelo.
