Sam Nhlengethwa
Nhlengethwa was born in the mining community of Payneville Springs in 1955 and grew up in Ratanda location in Heidelberg, east of Johannesburg. He completed a two-year Fine Art Diploma at the Rorkes Drift Art Centre in the late 1970s.
After graduating he taught part-time at the Federative Union of Black Artists (FUBA) in Johannesburg. While he exhibited extensively both locally and abroad during the 1980s and ’90s, Nhlengethwa’s travelling solo show South Africa, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in 1993 established him at the vanguard of critical consciousness in South Africa and he went on to win the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1994.
In these lithographs, Sam Nhlengethwa explores the topic of waiting. Most South Africans are good at being patient to beyond the limits of endurance. South Africans spend a lot of their lives in line waiting for public transport, waiting to be served at clinics, waiting to receive their pensions, waiting for water to be installed in their street, waiting at Home Affairs for documents, waiting for answers from corrupt politicians and business people. We are a nation of people who wait. ‘We all see people waiting and sometimes we become victims of waiting,’ says Nhlengethwa.
Where Those Kids, Lithographs, 500x648mm
“Two neatly dressed grandmothers wait. Are they waiting for their grandchildren to visit? Their own children or perhaps it is their husbands who have slipped off and gone somewhere they should not?”
Appointment Spaza Shop, Lithographs, 500x648m
“Could be a meeting up of friends, a get together to discuss business opportunities, a romantic liaison or something more sinister. The open-ended titles of the prints leave the interpretation up to the viewer, allowing us to each bring our own experiences of waiting to the work.”
Waiting for an answer, Lithographs, 500x648mm
“Suggests a moment of tension between the young couple, uncomfortably sitting at a table. It could be a proposal, a confession of infidelity or an announcement of a pregnancy.”
SASSA!, Lithographs, 500x648mm
Refers to the South Africa Social Security Agency, on which millions depend for their pensions, disability and child support grants. SASSA has been embroiled in endless inefficiencies and seemingly dodgy arrangements which has resulted in people waiting even more than they normally would.