The ARNDT Collection is delighted to announce the donation of a painting by South African Artist Zandile Tshabalala to the Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, Germany through the Arndt Foundation. The donation of "My mothers garden: Umcimbi I (A Gathering I)" (2022) signifies one of the first major works by internationally celebrated emerging artist Tshabalala entering a European Museum collection.

Zandile Tshabalala (born 1999) lives and works in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa. In 2021 she received the Kaiserring grant from the Mönchehaus Museum Goslar. Her works have been seen in exhibitions in South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Great Britain and Germany.

The South African artist belongs to a new generation that has discovered and reinterpreted figurative painting as an opportunity of human expression for themselves. Based on her own self-determination, she creates self-images of women who celebrate their black identity and deviate from the usual narrative about black women.

Zandile Tshabalala's paintings tell stories of lightness and self-confidence - of women like her in the 2020s: young and black. Her figures look at us with an open and confident gaze. Tshabalala's characters are colourful, powerful interpretations of her everyday reality. She frequently contrasts deliberately placed primary colours with the deep black, flat, hardly developed faces of the figures and testify to a rarely seen, spontaneous, free and refreshing approach to colour. The strong presence of her characters, whether relaxed reading, fooling around with friends or in intimate situations, shows an impressive sense of questioning the often-used narrative about African women.

Artist Portrait:
Photo credit, Mlungisi Mlungwana

Artwork caption:
Zandile Tshabalala
My mothers garden: Umcimbi I (A Gathering I), 2022
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 200 cm

Installation view:
Zandile Tshabalala, "In search of my mother's garden" (2022), Kunstmuseum Kloster Unser Lieben Frauen in Magdeburg, Germany

Images courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nagel Draxler, Berlin/Cologne/Munich