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Mbali Mdluli

Johannesburg

ERF #3 (2016)

Type of book work: Unique / sculptural book-object (one-of-a-kind)
Dimensions: 165 x 300
Media: Cut Lifestyle Magazines on black mount board

Artist's / designer's statements

Torn magazine stripped of its primary colours and reduced to black and white parts of the magazine. The image resembles an imagined and a nonspecific landscape.

The works reflect on a sustained concern with the dimensions of photography and the medium's lassitude in the face of a lived experience. The personal narrative that informs this body of work relates to a moment of an experienced displacement. From the strewn belongings, a large collection of home décor and design magazines was retrieved, which were then cut, ripped and torn into, to essentially transform them into undulating and contoured images presented as objects which function as emotional residue.

By constructing imagined landscapes, the use of horizontal lines portrays the tensions that exist in expressing personal events.

CONTOUR 1 (2016)

Type of book work: Unique / sculptural book-object (one-of-a-kind)
Dimensions: 175 x 195
Media: Cut Lifestyle Magazines on black mount board

Artist's / designer's statements

A colourful 3D image, cut and folded to resemble an imagined and nonspecific landscape.

In my work I explore time, space and memory. I reference the various effects and general impacts of television. I am also interested in other means of digital escapism, presented in the form of social networks and mobile phones. My fascination with these ever-present phenomena lies in the mental states and gaps created by them and how these could potentially be harnessed for further creative exploration. I seek to use the aesthetics and associations of television more effectively as a tool for re-creating or reawakening memories and the imaginary. I am currently looking at the concept of transient memory through imagery surrounding pixelation, distortion, magnification and colour fields. I have been photographing images of domestic objects, experimenting with video, different lenses as well as other mediums such as scanners, toy cameras and expired film (both colour & B&W). My intention is to find ways of capturing mundane or seemingly insignificant objects and memories that fill up the bigger picture of our everyday lives. Issues of memory, identity & the specificity of different mediums will be played out in new installations.





Artist

Education

2014 Attended Multi-Media/Post Production/Sound Design and Engineering courses at the Academy of Sound Engineering, Johannesburg, South Africa.
2013 Was accepted at HISK, Ghent, Belgium.
2010 Foundation & Intermediate Photography Courses at Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Exhibitions and Projects

2016 Habitat, ROOM Space & Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa. (SOLO)
2015 Unresolved, ROOM Space & Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa. (SOLO)
REVAMP, a group exhibition presented by the Dead Bunny Society
2013 A City Reimagined, Parking Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa. (SOLO)
Unlearning, curated by Francis Burger, Goethe on Main, Johannesburg, South Africa.
The Indexicality of a Ritual, curated by Sinethemba Twalo, Parking Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa.



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