Borrowing its title from the Latin phrase for ‘blank slate’, Mhlonishwa Zulu’s Tabula Rasa explores a core pillar of empiricism, actively challenging the notion of ‘innate ideas’ - the belief that knowledge is hardwired into us from birth. Zulu posits instead that human identity is entirely sculpted by the friction of lived experience. Situated within surrealism, Mhlonishwa Zulu’s work moves into magical realism, traversing spiritual scenographies built by architectures of fragmentation and reconstruction. Faith sits as a central axis of Zulu’s works, considering the body as a vessel and an archive for that which exists beyond the self. The metaphysics of his own creation, when in their highest essence, embody acts of faith. Zulu’s current research explores the cultural and historical power of signs, as well as the tensions that arise from their contemporary reinterpretation. Offering an archaeology of ontology and epistemology, the artist postulates that everyday items hold an important key to understanding society at different stages of history. He interrogates these objects through an anthropological lens, as sites where meaning is simultaneously generated and degraded, capturing the exquisite interplay between both realities.
Through the incorporation and repetition of select objects in his work, the artist has established a considered, distinctive visual lexicon. Rocks are particularly prevalent across his oeuvre, providing firmament and casting shadows as timekeepers. His ongoing explorations around relativity and positionality are embodied by the humble chair. Fences encompass the land and the untold stories of its tumultuous past, becoming boundaries that hold a myriad of memories and possibilities. Bricks become signs of life lived and yet to be lived, both building and ruin. Within this body of work, Mhlonishwa Zulu strips his approach back to the ‘barebones’ of painting. Largely influenced by the expansive scenery of KwaZulu-Natal and Cape Town, the artist maps out dreamlike planes through colour and light. Zulu employs distance and distortion to shift the balance of his compositions, ensuring that his audience is never on solid ground. Mundane and dilapidated objects situated in the works act as relics and archives - at once familiar and strange. Gently suspended in time, these objects defy preconceived understandings of form and weight.
Mhlonishwa Zulu (b. 2002, South Africa) is a Cape Town-based artist with roots deeply entrenched in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Moving fluidly between surrealism and magical realism, the artist delves into the intersections of fantasy, faith and lived experience. Zulu favors flattened perspectives, strong outlines, and saturated color fields that give his figures an emblematic, almost iconic quality, often inflected with dreamlike distortions, unexpected juxtapositions, and symbolic details that reveal his interest in surrealism and altered states of perception. His practice forms part of a younger generation of South African artists reshaping figurative painting by fusing contemporary Black urban experience with surreal, psychologically charged imagery.