Sam Nhlengethwa

Nightshift, 2012

This work is an instinctive thematic progression from Nhlengethwa's earlier work and he describes it as a review of his previous subjects in the context of conversation. Focusing conversation as a basic human interaction in a selection of social contexts: ebullient schoolgirls on a bustling city street, a couple intimately sharing an umbrella, a group of men smoking together after dark. Several of the works depict conversations between young men, some located at an initiation school, wrapped in their characteristic grey blankets. These are images of ritualistic communion, charged with anxious anticipation. In the context of conversation, the ceremonial and the everyday comfortably hang alongside each other.