Simphiwe Ndzube: Like the Snake that Fed the Chameleon

My skin is tightening
soon I shall shed it
like a monitor lizard
like remembered comfort
at the new moon rising
I will eat the last signs of my weakness
remove the scars of old childhood wars
and dare to enter the forest whistling
like a snake that had fed the chameleon
for changes
I shall be forever.
— excepted from Audre Lorde, “Solstice,” 1978

With Like the Snake that Fed the Chameleon, Simphiwe Ndzube continues to develop and expand his cosmology, reimagining Black bodies as mythical and fantastic beings capable of inhabiting multiple dimensions. His figures fly, flail, fall, and dance their way from sculpture, to sound, to canvas through multiple environments, highlighting the fluidity and permeability of identity itself. Like the snake, his characters can be cold-blooded and stealthy; like the chameleon, they are capable of change.

Whereas the bodies in Ndzube’s earlier works are often faceless or headless, this series includes detailed portraits of a number of the individual characters and further develops their unique personalities. In prior exhibitions, Ndzube’s figures reckoned with drought and desolate environments, but the landscapes in Like the Snake that Fed the Chameleon have grown fertile and sensual along with the humanoids that populate them. Where once the earth was dry and barren, it has now been sown and is ready for harvest. Within the paintings, pink flowers rise to the sky and spread their fleshy petal-tongues to the sunlight, begging to be kissed. Around them, a sculptural cornfield grows throughout the exhibition. A seven-foot dandy traipses throughout the proceedings, peacocking his vibrant couture to anyone who will pay attention. A Bacon-esque figure in a Garden of Earthly Delights, perhaps he is trying to draw the eyes of the couple making love in the sunlight on a canvas nearby.

At the belly of the snake lies the artist’s surrealist adaptation of a domestic shack, based on those of the townships surrounding Cape Town, South Africa, where Ndzube was born and raised. A twenty-minute sound piece Ndzube composed and recorded with Thabo K. Makgolo and Zimbini Makwethu emanates from within the large, suspended structure, filling the surrounding spaces with haunting music. It incorporates acoustic elements that evoke sorcery, witch-hunting, and creatures that fly by night. In Ndzube’s world, a darkness is always lurking, but on-notice that it will eventually be evicted by the light.

— Ben Lee Ritchie Handler

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Simphiwe Ndzube (b. 1990, Cape Town, South Africa) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and Cape Town, South Africa. He received his BFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. Ndzube’s work is characterised by a fundamental interplay between objects, media and two-dimensional surfaces; stitching together a subjective account of the Black experience in post-apartheid South Africa from a mythological perspective. Recent exhibitions include The Fantastic Ride to Gwadana, Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2020, solo); INXS: Major Never Before Seen Works by Simphiwe Ndzube, Moffat Takadiwa, and Zhou Yilun, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Hollywood Babylon: A Re-Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Nicodim, Jeffrey Deitch, and AUTRE Magazine, Los Angeles, USA (2020); Where Water Comes Together With Other Water, The 15th Lyon Biennale, Lyon, France (2019); People, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, USA (2019); In the Order of Elephants After the Rain, Galeria Nicodim, Bucharest, Romania (2019, solo); New Acquisitions, The Rubell Museum, Miami, USA (2018); NOISE!, The Frans Hals Museum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2018); Waiting for Mulungu, The CC Foundation, Shanghai, China (2018, solo); Bharbarosi, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2017, solo); and Becoming, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town, South Africa (2016, solo). His work can be found in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France; and the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa, among others. Oracles of the Pink Universe, his first solo institutional exhibition in the States, opens at the Denver Art Museum this June. Like the Snake that Fed the Chameleon is the artist’s third solo exhibition with Nicodim.

Press Release and CV

SCI-Arc Channel tours the intricacies of Simphiwe Ndzube's studio and background, taking a close look at two of his recent exhibitions: Like the Snake that Fed the Chameleon at Nicodim Gallery and Oracles of the Pink Universe at the Denver Art Museum.

Aside from mentioned creativity and technical versatility the captivating beauty of Simphiwe Ndzube's solo exhibition at Nicodim comes from the fact that it uses fantasy as a language to communicate with the viewers. Skipping over cultural differences and avoiding misinterpretation, Ndzube is working with the impossible to speak about the universal subjects of fluidity and permeability of identity itself, with an accent on his native country and its inhabitants.

At the belly of the snake lies the artist’s surrealist adaptation of a domestic shack, based on those of the townships surrounding Cape Town, South Africa, where Ndzube was born and raised.

The multifaceted Ndzube melds together a mixture of media with this exhibit, from collage, sculpture, sound pieces, paintings and more. While the title sounds dark and menacing, the works contain bright pops of color, unlike others that have highlighted drought and desolation.

A master storyteller, Nzdube creates an existential, otherworldly space where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. The work defies easy explanations, as mystery is piled on top of enigma. Each painting or sculpture shares a homemade, do-it-yourself aesthetic, with all seams made visible, as though haphazardly sewn, stitched, stapled, glued and pinned together in a hurry.

With Like the Snake that Fed the Chameleon, Simphiwe Ndzube continues to develop and expand his cosmology, reimagining Black bodies as mythical and fantastic beings capable of inhabiting multiple dimensions.

The Venezuelan-American musician-painter and the South African multimedia artist talk about their upbringings, inspirations, and making art with a sense of humor in this interview with Michael Slenske.

Simphiwe Ndzube talks about his childhood growing up in South Africa and how as an artist he uses his Magical Realist style to blend past experiences with fantasy. Ndzube talks about following his inner child as an intuitive guide to his art making which blends sculpture, painting, and assemblage. Ndzube discusses art-making as a tool for unpacking traumas, and how he uses his own practice to process past experiences.

South African-born artist Simphiwe Ndzube has garnered attention with his hybrid works that fuse painting, sculpture, and found objects, depicting a surreal world of fantastical Black bodies. The artist has crafted a field of corn stalks branching out from the hanging installation into the gallery space filled with his signature figurative works.

Ndzube reimagines Black bodies as mythical beings capable of inhabiting multiple dimensions. His pieces tend to blend found objects, paintings, sculptures, and textiles in vibrant colors.

Ndzube’s work is like a kaleidoscope in which harsh reality enmeshes with hallucination and worlds weave in and out of each other, fantastic color exploding at their intersections. At once flamboyant and mystical, his practice is populated by evanescent figures that sprawl out in his paintings and strut through his exhibitions as sculptures.

Los Angeles

February 13 – March 20, 2021

Press Release

Selected Works