Sphephelo Mnguni is a South African contemporary artist, born and bred in Durban. He obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at the Durban University of Technology in 2016 and has exhibited his work locally and abroad.

Mnguni enjoys a variation of techniques, from painting, film, drawing, and digital art. But of all the mentioned methods, he quite enjoys painting and collaging. In 2017 he made a monumental collage installation titled Compositionz curated by himself at TheOtherRoom Durban, the installation was a conceptual dialogue between painting, collage, and film.

Most recently, he did a mini-open studio exhibition with fellow artist, Wonder Buhle Mbambo, titled Unfinished. The open studio was another unconventional project, which was an artistic conversation between film, two and three-dimensional art, and postmodern African music.

Sphephelo’s work interrogates the contemporary status quo, relatively inspecting pre and current sociopolitical issues and layers of blackness in Africa and the black diaspora abroad. “The narrative is also propelled by the hierarchies and inequality observed through my daily travels, experiences, and interaction with spaces post-apartheid”.

Today, Mngun’s body of work has shifted from his signature collage and mixed media painting style, and exclusively explores painting in depth. The aesthetic and theoretical side of it seems to put more emphasis on black culture, and the practice also serves as a documentation of the present times and the current African revolution.