The print, titled Iqhawe, is a multicolor lithograph with collage elements and comes in an edition of 50. Iqhawe means “the hero” in Isixhosa, Ndzube’s home language. The figure in the print is a fictional character made up by the artist and based on myths of Xhosa hero warriors as well as Joseph Campbell’s notion of the hero’s journey–encountering struggle, respite, and eventually freedom.
The hero in this portrait, looking back, his eyes partially ahead of his body, while offering an open palm forward, becomes a symbol of rebirth and fits within the overall narrative of Ndzube’s work that stitches together a subjective account of the black experience in post-apartheid South Africa from a mythological perspective.
During the process of making the print, Ndzube used painting, drawing and collage techniques that we recognize from his material vocabulary in his paintings and sculptures. While the character is made up, literally through eight layers of color and collage and conceptually as a mythical hero, the hand and the eye are cut from photographs of the artist. The combined analog and digital techniques play with our visual perception, the gaze and blur the line between reality and fantasy.
Courtesy of Cirrus Gallery & Cirrus Editions.