Dali

Dalingcebo (Dali) Ngubane

(b, 1997, Kwa-Ngwanase, South Africa)

I am a self-taught visual artist based in Johannesburg South Africa.  My work interrogates emotion in relation to contemporary life. Most of the influence for my work draws from people I meet and how they experience life and the stories they tell others and themselves.

I use body language as a core element in my work in an attempt to capture the emotional state of people as they go about their lives. These days everything is fleeting, conjuring these feelings of stagnancy or sometimes unrelenting rapidity. My practice sometimes is but finding some sort of balance between motion and fluidity of life that we lose ourselves in and static contemplation that draws us back into ourselves. I try to show this through figurative painting because I think it enables me to show action and motion all without extreme deliberation.

I think humans, through race, class, gender and other forms of social identity are always in competition for time and space throughout their existence. I always try to give that space to different characters. Through this I end up with an intersection of bodies that from time to time represents interpersonal relationships that shape our lives so profoundly.

When I start drawing or painting it feels like this contention between will and the medium. I paint as I have approached life with no particular final destination in mind, allowing myself to get lost, allowing for accident and luck to shape the final image. 

I am inspired by artists including Banele Khoza, Francis Bacon, Justice Mukheli and George Condo.

Education

2014-2020: Master of Science – University of the Witwatersrand

Exhibitions

2018: GCRO Urban Gaze competition finalist – Keyes Art Gallery