A solo exhibition by Thobani Khanyile, winner of the Members’ Award Show 2025

Thobani Khanyile, born in 1994 in Durban’s KwaMashu township, brings his distinctive realism to iDla ngamabala, his debut solo exhibition following his triumph at the Members’ Award Show 2025. His winning piece, Woeful Studies, presented a haunting image of a cow submerged in floodwaters, accompanied by a bright rubber duck. As critic Sizwe Mahlalela noted, the work resonates with Judith Butler’s concept of “precarious life,” exposing how certain bodies are rendered more grievable than others. The cow’s innocent yet alarmed gaze implicates the viewer in the act of witnessing, while the duck becomes a surreal counterpoint to devastation – a trace of absurdity amidst state failure.

The exhibition title draws on the Zulu proverb, “iDla ngamabala,” meaning “the leopard uses its spot to catch its prey.” Just as the leopard’s markings serve as camouflage, Khanyile’s practice employs visual strategies that conceal and reveal, disrupt and disturb. His realism, which he describes as a mirror to reality, becomes a means of interrogating the plight of humanity—both mental and physical struggles that mark the journey to glory.

Khanyile’s influences are as layered as his imagery. Hip Hop, with its capacity to narrate the human story from multiple perspectives, informs his approach to depicting struggle, resilience, and survival. Working across pencil, charcoal, paint, ink, and pastel, he crafts images that evoke emotion and provoke reflection. His subjects often embody the precariousness of life, yet they are rendered with a sensitivity that insists on their dignity.

iDla ngamabala invites audiences to enter Khanyile’s world of camouflage and revelation, where the everyday becomes uncanny and the familiar is transformed into a site of critical questioning. It is an exhibition that asks us to look closely – not only at the art, but at ourselves, and the fragile realities we inhabit.

Isthunzi Sentokazi