Nicholas Hlobo

"The South African artist Nicholas Hlobo uses sculpture, installation, performance art and drawing to take up issues such as gender, cultural differences and contemporary politics. The starting point for most sculptural installations, drawings and performance art, Hlobo [draws on] the roots he has in the Xhosa culture, and [his] sexual identity. His works merge many kinds of recycled materials, like rubber tubes from car tires, fabric, tape, wire, latex, silicone and wood. They range in size from small objects you can take in hand, to the large room installation. Hlobos work leads viewers into the scenario of the South African culture. They provide enough points to keep building a bridge over the differences between the local cultural sense ... the use of his senses, and its use in the global art world. Hlobo invites us to read his world through the visual density of material and through the poetry of titles that reflect global and South African realities. All Hlobos has received titles of his mother tongue - isixhosa - to get viewers on a cultural translation. Hlobos work stands between umxhosa tradition and the new democratic South African reality. Sculpture Installations is a resource that can provide spectators knowledge about both past and present. Hlobos performances going on between the sacred and the secular, present, and the traditional past. The tissue is real in the supernatural and question the morality of traditional faith."--Publisher's website.