Collection: David Madlabane

My artwork examines my identity, environment and elements of architecture to construct a new narrative that observes my daily commute from home to the city of Johannesburg, walking in the streets of Johannesburg, I look closely to the deconstructed structures of the buildings and I infuse them with the portraits .I focus on the portraits to show the expressions of African people to place and showcase them in a position that makes the viewer engage with them.
I use contour lines inspired by our fingerprints an inversely use them on the portrait to play with the idea of identity and to show my constant struggle to develop my personal understanding of identity and where I come from. The use of architecture in my work explores the exterior communication of humans and structures with geo-metric and technical drawn marks that I use as a metaphor to express certain emotions and the sub-conscious dialogue that happens on the daily.