Treasure Mlima

Treasure Mlima is a self-taught South African artist born in 1999. Mlima’s works are composed of 2D prints, showcasing an array of imagery dealing with space and identity from an African perspective. Technically Mlima’s artistic process includes the use of found images that are digitally manipulated into collages, then carved into wood and eventually painted with oil-based and acrylic inks. Mlima sees himself as a sample of a type of existence in the world that is African. As an artist Mlima commits himself to being a cultural practitioner who has the duty to expose what is hidden. Through his art, Mlima both reveals the existing and suggests a different reality using neutral symbolism, neither confrontational nor compromising.

Treasure Mlima finds aesthetic inspiration in the art movements of Pop Art and Surrealism, interpreted uniquely with themes based on African experiences and African perceptions. Mlima uses Pop Art to depict the familiar or stereotypes, and surrealism to find the peculiar. Mlima’s interest in visual conversations range between various concepts, such as African identity and addressing social ills and mental health. Stylistically, Mlima presents his exploration of mental health with surrealistic imagery as he portrays headless figures in the midst of conversation. The artist’s work is ethereal, putting situations in untypical spaces with a blank background, reflective of a journey, where one goes into the unknown looking for an answer, or in the case of the artist, looking for a new face which represents a new identity.

Submitted by Artyli.com