Colbert Mashile - Act IX: Scene 1
In this exhibition, Colbert Mashile looks back on his professional career as a dramatic endeavour. Titled Act IX: Scene I, referring to Mashile’s ninth year as a practising artist, the exhibition is made up exclusively of work created in 2009.
Mashile has become known for his particular style of local surrealism. Despite Mashile being pinpointed as the mouth-piece for issues around Sotho traditional circumcision rites, the label has become obsolete as an all-purpose interpretation as Mashile moves forward. Over the years, his imagery has developed into a sophisticated language developed via Mashile’s journey’s into deep imagination.
Writing of Colbert Mashile’s work in 2008, Virginia MacKenny referred to ‘elements one can recognise, but not always identify. Creatures with strangely featured heads and often amorphous bodies populate his landscapes and, while many of the images … have an almost graphic directness about their intent, others … remain difficult to interpret.’¹ Despite the bizarre nature of his subject matter, Mashile declines to offer any direct interpretation of his own work, preferring to leave the viewer to fly solo into his/her own imagination in order to locate potential meanings.
However, in this collection of unique and editioned work Mashile has taken a turn towards the figurative. Reminiscent of script dialogue, the work reads as a story pieced together using figures that are predominantly recognisable. Without abandoning surreal elements altogether, Mashile deftly employs anthropomorphism in order to achieve a remarkable mix of sharp satire and obscure personal references.
