photo: Jonathan Kope
“Ntlonti’s work, which spans across painting, performance, sculpture and sound, is preoccupied with structural impossibility and limit. Her abstraction hints at the consistency in the violence of the structure that displaces, dislocates and dispossesses at all levels, including corporeal, political, spiritual, psycho-social, and territorial.” - Vusi Nkomo
Working in layers of paint and paper, Ntlonti gradually builds up her works on canvas by intuitively applying and stripping away material to reveal chance compositions which refer to the textures and hues of the vernacular cob architecture found in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.
Resembling topographical charts or maps, the paintings conjure landscapes imbued with nostalgia and longing, reflecting Ntlonti’s complicated relationship to her ancestral amaXhosa homeland, which is at once both familiar and strange. Through the act of stitching (using thread from deconstructed vegetable sacking) Ntlonti seeks to mend, to heal over, the scars of generational traumas caused by the internal displacement and scattering of communities.
To date, Ntlonti has had four solo exhibitions: Inzonzobila (2024), Vuthulula (2021), Nothwala impahlana (2020) and Kukho Isililo Somntu II (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Fragment II at Commune Gallery, Vienna (2025), Eighteen Painters at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York (2024) and The Future is Behind Us at A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town (2022).
In 2024, Ntlonti was awarded the Spirit Now London Acquisition Prize announced at Frieze London, with an acquisition by the Women’s Art Collection at the University of Cambridge (UK).
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curriculum vitae
1993 Born in Cape Town, South Africa
education
2017 Bachelor of Fine Art, University of Cape Town
solo exhibitions
2024 Inzonzobila, blank projects, Cape Town
2021 Vuthulula, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town
2020 Nothwala impahlana, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town
2017 Kukho Isililo Somntu II, blank projects, Cape Town
group exhibitions
2025 Fragment II, Commune Gallery, Vienna
2024 We, The People: 30 Years of Democracy in South AfricaNorval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa
2024 Eighteen Painters, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
2023 The Orange River, SixtySix London, London
2022 The Future is Behind Us, A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town
2022 Seeds of the Fig, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Tulbagh
2022 Home Strange Home, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Tulbagh
2022 The Phoenix Runway, WHATIFTHEWORLD, Cape Town
2021 Space & Place, Galerie EIGEN + ART, Leipzig
2021 021 - 2021, Stevenson, Amsterdam
2019 “SANS”, Open24hrs, Cape Town
2019 The Female Line, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town
2019 Unresolved Category, Gallery MOMO, Cape Town
2019 Do you know these 5 Women Artists?, North West University Gallery, Potchefstroom
2018 Sunday Service, Gallery of the University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch
2017 Greatest Hits, AVA Gallery, Cape Town
2016 Barclays Absa L’Atelier Art Awards, Absa Art Gallery, Johannesburg
2015 Sasol New Signatures, Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria
selected performances
2019 ... Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests. I'll dig with it, Infecting the City, The Slave Lodge, Cape Town
2016 The Portrait (Performance with iQhiya), Documenta 14, Kassel and Athens
2016 iQhiya, AVA Gallery, Cape Town
2016 Ukuzila: ndiyakuthanda sis'Nosipho, ndiyakuthanda sis’wam, Infecting the City, Cape Town
2016 The Commute Pt II, Institute For Creative Arts, University of Cape Town, Cape Town
2016 The Commute Pt I, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town
2016 The Portrait II, V & A Waterfront, in association with Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town
2016 The Portrait I, Greatmore Studios, Cape Town
2016 Echoing Voices from Within: Rhodes Must Fall, University of Cape Town, Cape Town
