Zandile Tshabalala & Teresa Kutala Firmino  Galerie Nagel Draxler @ LEMPERTZ, Brussels

03/04/2025 – 26/04/2025

Opening: Wednesday, April 2, 2025 from 6 to 9 pm

Exhibition: April 3–26, 2025

Reception during Art Brussels: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 from 5 to 8 pm

Galerie Nagel Draxler @ Lempertz, Brussels

Grote Hertstraat 6
Rue du Grand Cerf
1000 Brussels

This spring, Galerie Nagel Draxler presents a selection of paintings by Zandile Tshabalala and Teresa Kutala Firmino, two South African artists representing a young generation of Black female voices, at Lempertz in Brussels. Tshabalala's vibrant paintings challenge racial and gender stereotypes, portraying Black women in empowering ways, while Kutala Firmino addresses trauma caused by colonialism, civil wars, and ongoing struggles in her community.

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)

Teresa Kutala Firmino (1993, Pomfret, South Africa) is a multimedia artist based in Johannesburg. Working with paint, photography, sculpture, and performance, her work negotiates trauma – both personal and collective. Her paintings are constructed scenes of past and present, as she often collects images from magazines, newspapers, historical documents, and social media, placing them in colorful settings. The works emerge from the search for alternative past, present and future narratives of Africa, thus rebuilding her own archive of African history. Firmino investigates the trauma caused by colonialism, civil wars, and ongoing struggles in her community.