TURIYA MAGADLELA

Raised in Soweto, a tight-knit suburb outside Johannesburg, Magadlela’s textile abstractions are an odyssey of references, channeling the racial, sexual, and economic conditions of her native South Africa into formal, paint-less investigations of colour, gradient, and material.

Magadlela’s artworks straddle the space between painting, sculpture and textile art. Strips of featherweight stocking fabric are delicately grafted together, then pulled taut on canvas. This creates evocative, sometimes jarring geometries under tension that remain framed by the canvas’ four corners—a decision Magadlela attributes to her fine arts education in Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Her compositions are erotic, but can explore so much: the stories of South African black women, feminism, the workplace, wealth and poverty; yet they are lilting enough to meditate on and beautify colour: sometimes the color of human flesh, other times a rose.

Turiya Magadlela is based in Johannesburg. In 2015 she was awarded Africa’s prestigious FNB Art Prize, and she has exhibited across the continent and worldwide. Her work has appeared in the Glenn Ligon-curated Black Blue in 2017 in St. Louis, Missouri and in the Istanbul Biennale in 2019.

Turiya Magadlela: Stretched Until Seen Through will be on view from April 28th to June 30th.