Mbulelo Terrence LOKOTO

As a visual artist that inhabits painting and drawing, I produce figurative artworks. These works evolved from the ideas of fictional, metaphorical, and foretold stories by elderly people during my childhood, which I now believe to be blending with my daily life. This includes the ideas of striving for power and desire. My works fluidly explore identity, political, social, and ethnic themes, as someone who comes from two cultures: the Hlubi culture and street culture.

With the curiosity and fascination of realism style to portray and create artworks that challenge the viewer in a rhetorical way. My fascination with creating is to blend fantastical elements with contemporary everyday life experiences, which leads my work to be described or seen as a magical surrealism movement. This is further clarified by the muted vibrant palette I use to express personal experiences through my artistic practice.

In the realm of artistic expression, the fusion of Magical Realist elements and human behaviours creates a fascinating narrative that goes beyond ordinary boundaries and the exploration of the complexities between these two elements, by using animals as symbolic channels and a turquoise blue monochromatic background as a canvas of emotion, which creates dreamlike scenes. I aim to invite viewers to venture beyond the surface and start on a life changing journey of self-discovery and careful observation of those around them.

My preferred medium is oil paints on canvases which allowed me to achieve more detail and a slower work pace for greater observation.