Zandile Tshabalala  Don't Let Me Fall

06/11/2025 – 03/01/2026

Galerie Nagel Draxler
Elisenstraße 4-6
50667 Köln

Opening / Eröffnung:
Donnerstag, 06. November 2025, 18 – 21 Uhr
Thursday, November 6, 2025, 6 – 9 pm

Öffnungszeiten / Opening hours:
Mittwoch - Freitag 11 – 18 Uhr, Samstag 11 – 16 Uhr
Wednesday - Friday 11am – 6pm, Saturday 11am – 4pm

Zandile Tshabalala (1999, Gauteng, South Africa) lives and works in Johannesburg. She is the star and female voice of a young South African urban generation of Black artists. Her characters –Black women, including herself– defy racist and sexist stereotypes that have been constructed to pigeonhole Black female identity into narrow boxes. They do not conform to one-dimensional, superficial, or disparaging role attributions. Thus, they assert themselves against the representation of Black women within Western-influenced art history. In her book “Art on my mind. Visual Politics” (1995), American cultural critic, writer, artist, and feminist theorist Bell Hooks addresses the revolutionary power that the art of Black artists can have on the Black community in North America. She states: “Creating counter-hegemonic images of blackness that resist the stereotypes and challenge the artistic imagination is not a simple task.“ Tshabalala’s paintings demonstrate how this task can be achieved in the most powerful and cheerful way. Through her art, Tshabalala seeks to change the common narrative by immortalizing these women on canvas with idiosyncratic brushstrokes: “For so long we have been seen only as stereotypes, but we are so many things: sometimes we stand alone, sometimes we are in a group, sometimes sad, sometimes happy. And before we can address broader issues, we have to be properly perceived.“ (Zandile Tshabalala)