Nkosana Dominic
  TSHABANGU

portrait Dominic
(1965)

My whole life I live in Dube, a part of Soweto. These images of the streets, markets, the ordinary people and the shebeens return in my collages. I was shaped in the township but was able to attend the African Institute of Arts - the Funda Centre in Johannesburg. One of the very few possibilities under Apartheid to study painting. At Funda I also qualified as a teacher. After winning the Bertrams V.O. Art of Africa Award I was offered a studio in the famous Bag factory in Newtown / Johannesburg. Although I exhibit regularly I have to combine my painting with a job as an lay- artists with Pace Magazine.

I capture the daily life and historical events in a journalistic manner. In my colllage paintings I use pictures and pages from magazines and include found objects like cloth and corrugated card board. My works have a mosaic atmosphere and are quite colourful. I tell short stories: scenes from the illegal bars; shebeen queen , how hostel dwellers have to live and how hard work gives little reward.

In Amsterdam during my stay of four months as fellow of the Thami Mnyele Foundation. Critics compared my way of depicting the men in the street with the work of Jan Steen and Vincent van Gogh whose Potato-eaters I parafrased in "Cheese-eater".

I try to make easy accessible work, to capture the history of my era for the coming generations to understand it.