Notes

Kindly donated by the artist.

Zandile Tshabalala is one of South Africa’s fastest rising young artists. Receiving her Bachelors in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2022, Tshabalala has enjoyed massive success locally and abroad. The artist has shown a dedication to black figuration, translating her lived experiences onto the canvas while referring to a contemporary Black canon of painters like Kerry James Marshall, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Meleko Mokgosi. This aspect of her practice was celebrated in Zeitz MOCAA’s blockbuster exhibition When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting which featured two of Tshabalala’s works including Two Reclining Women (2020) which graces the cover of the exhibition catalogue published by Thames & Hudson.

Tshabalala has exhibited locally and internationally since 2020, showing in galleries and museums such as the mmArthouse and BKhz, Johannesburg; Galerie Nagel Draxler, Mönchehaus-Museum Goslar, and Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, all in Germany. and has also participated in art fairs such as the Cape Town Investec Art Fair and Art Basel Miami.

The title of this painting comes from author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck, a collection of short stories about the lives of Nigerian women. Most of the tales depict women at a threshold, a point of change and the griefs and losses that come with growing. Finding herself at a similar threshold in early 2023, Tshabalala’s practice was initially stifled by feelings of grief. As an artist who typically focuses on joy, ease, and leisure, she had to give herself over to a new genre of emotion, however uncomfortable. Things Around My Neck represents an acceptance of this, a small surrender that allowed the artist to discover a new type of beauty in representing silence, loneliness, and darkness.

The painted nude figure, a proxy for the artist herself, would almost disappear into the dark background if not for her striking adornments of a luxurious fur and a glimmering golden silk around her neck. A chunky pearl earring decorates one ear while a white scarf frames her face with its bright, unyielding eyes that knowingly look at the viewer. Vibrant fingernails in the same shade of hot red as their made-up lips add a daring pop of colour to the composition.