Nicholas Hlobo
Nicholas Hlobo is a South African artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He was born in 1975 in Cape Town. He earned a Bachelor of Technology from Technikon Witwatersrand in 2002. He creates large sculptural works that are expansive masses that at once feel oozey, voluptuous, and highly structured. Through his work, he navigates his identity as a gay Xhosa man in South Africa and reevaluates the definitions of masculinity and sexuality in his country. The variance between femininity and masculinity is created by his use of materials such as rubber inner tubes, ribbon, organza, lace, and found objects. Hlobo cuts and sews objects back together to symbolize the idea of the healing that comes after a tearing apart in order to express his interest in the history of colonization in South Africa as well as the overt and covert ways that colonization occurs in modern life. Early life Nicholas Hlobo was born in Cape Town, South Africa, but grew up in Dutywa on the Eastern Cape, a region previously known as the Transkei during the Apartheid era in South Africa. Raised by his maternal grandmother, Hlobo recalls her being very strict, yet also the source of many of his