Jamal Nxedlana

I’ve been diving ever deeper into the realm of used clothing — exploring stains as data, memory, and material. Working with layers of textiles built up from second-hand garments — in this case men’s shirts from the 90s, patchworked and then bonded together with other used fabrics — I create a dense, almost volumetric textile. That layering is important for me — it holds different histories, material knowledge, and timelines all at once, like a dense material record. Within this layered structure, I inscribe a motif that begins as a microscopic image of a stain on used clothing . I trace and isolate the stain digitally as part of an evolving archive of stain forms. These traces are combined to produce a composite shape, which is then laser-cut into the textile. Here, the stain functions less as an image and more as a kind of protocol or visual algorithm — something that generates the form of the work. This work, titled Notation, is one of the ways I’m working through the generative potential of used clothing.

“I approach stains as repositories of memory and data, reframing them as poetic and political symbols that challenge conventional notions of beauty, value, and desirability.” During his TaDA residency last spring Jamal Nxedlana @jamalaun explored how used clothing – often discarded due to stains or shifting trends – can be reframed as a resource, rich with memory and creative potential. About his project “Soft Stain” he writes: “Microscopic photographs of stains on discarded clothing formed the basis of a digital collage, translated into laser-cut motifs on bonded textiles. The bonding process - layering fabrics with adhesive, heat, and pressure - underscores the tension between fragility and resilience in discarded materials. By inscribing stain-derived motifs into these surfaces, “Soft Stain” reveals what is typically concealed, proposing stains not as flaws to erase but as forms to be celebrated and reactivated in the fabric’s ongoing lifecycle. In doing so, the work speaks to broader discourses on fashion waste and postcolonial economies of reuse, positioning African and diasporic practices of reinvention as central rather than peripheral to global debates on sustainability and cultural innovation.” Jamal worked with our partners at Textil Color, @lobra_ag_thal and @werkpark_ar . He sourced all textiles from local thrift stores in Arbon. Photo Documentary at the TaDA Studio by @ladinabischof

Opening today @investeccapetownartfair where we will show a solo booth by @jamalaun curated by @mariella.franzoni on the Tomorrows Today section. Find us in Booth TT9 | Curated by Mariella Franzoni 20.02 - 22.02 2026 CTICC, Cape Town, South Africa The Cotton Speaks explores the social, political, and material life of second-hand clothing as it circulates between the Global North and South. Drawing on long-term research in Johannesburg’s used-clothing markets, Jamal Nxedlana treats garments as carriers of data, memory, and desire, using textile installation, photography, sound, and digital processes to examine how power, value, and Black identity are shaped through global trade, technology, and urban life. The project reframes discarded textiles as active sites of knowledge and imagination, proposing material practice as a decolonial way of rethinking contemporary systems of circulation and meaning. (Text by Mariella Franzoni) For more information and other inquiries dm or email [email protected] Photos by Gerhardt Coetzee #jamalnxedlana

I recently spent some time in Johannesburg continuing my research on used clothing in the city. The trip was as much about research as it was about reconnecting with a place that remains a vital source of inspiration for me and a place where I learn through being present. Johannesburg continues to shape how I think about circulation, material afterlives, and the political dimensions of textiles. The images in this post document used-clothing stores across the Johannesburg CBD - both interiors and storefronts. These spaces have become especially significant sites for thrift practices, culture, and community following the closure of Dunusa, the city’s largest open-air used-clothing market. The first image is a collage made from multiple storefront photographs. The images are broken down into grids and reassembled, drawing on visual strategies I’ve been developing through my recent work with grids and computer-vision logics - a way of thinking about places and systems, and how this process opens space for speculative and imagined readings. The remaining images are more direct photographs of storefronts and interiors, with minimal intervention beyond colour. I’m now back in Geneva, have just moved into a new studio, and am looking forward to the year ahead!

The Cotton Speaks in Joburg and Soft Sculpture (2025) are currently on view in EMBODIED SURFACES at @larada_locarno in Locarno, curated by @kutokouto and @rafaelkouto Open until 14 December 2025. It’s a pleasure to share space with artists engaging the politics and poetics of textiles — and to see my work situated within the exhibition’s wider conversations on surface, embodiment, and the stories that materials carry. Image Credits: Riccardo Giancola @riccardo_giancola

Looking back on my time at the @tadaresidency in Arbon earlier this year — a period that was deeply generative for my practice. I spent those months experimenting with new materials and imaging processes, and began developing ideas that I’m continuing to explore and expand on now. I’ve been thinking about stains, wear, and discarded textiles not as signs of decay, but as sites of information, where the histories of bodies, labour, and circulation are inscribed into fabric. In this way, textiles function as material interfaces, recording traces of contact and circulation while holding latent data and generative potential. #TaDA #visualart #textileart Image 1 and 3 © @ladinabischof / TaDA Rest by me

Soft Stain is a new work showing in @tadaresidency TaDA: TOGETHER — Five Years of the Textile and Design Alliance, currently on view at Werk2 in Arbon. The piece extends my ongoing exploration of stains as data, material, and metaphor. Using microscopic photographs of stains on discarded clothing, I created collages that were translated into laser-cut motifs on bonded used textiles. Through a process of thrifting, imaging, layering, bonding, and cutting, Soft Stain brings visibility to what is often hidden — reframing stains as poetic and political forms, as vessels of memory, material history, and meaning.

I’m excited to share that I’ll be participating in the duo exhibition Second Impressions @valentin61.ch in Lausanne, opening this Friday, 29 August 2025, where I will be showing Inversion Archive — Cyanotypes alongside @ccamillekkaiser . These new works are a continuation of my ongoing Inversion Archive series but employ a different material approach. Drawing from my iPhone camera roll and found visual imagery, the series expands its geographic scope beyond downtown Johannesburg to include photographs from my travels through Durban, Nairobi, Dakar, Rio de Janeiro, and Paquis in Geneva, where I am now based. The works are arranged in various grid formations, creating new visual constellations that explore relationships between places, objects, and identities. Through this process, I aim to reimagine the everyday and disrupt fixed narratives.

It’s the final week of my exhibition @nomansart in Amsterdam - closing this Saturday 24 August. I feel very lucky to be able to make and show work. Thank you to everyone who has visited , supported and engaged with this exhibition! I’m also excited to share that I’ll be showing new work soon @valentin61.ch in Lausanne - more on that next week!

The Cotton Speaks in Joburg is an 8-minute video work currently on view @nomansart in Amsterdam, as part of my solo exhibition Data Tapestries. The video is a way to present my research and process in an embodied and poetic way. Echoing my approach to the broader project, it maps the networks of used-clothing in downtown Johannesburg — tracing textures, rhythms, and spaces layered with stories, data, and movement. A quote from Dr Mpho Matsipa expanding on the work: Nxedlana’s practice of thrifting re-figures Johannesburg as a site of diverse cultural identities that intersect with practices, technologies and logistics that invite geopolitical inquiry with practices that combines sorting, selection, discernment and bargain hunting and decomposition with a focus on sustainability and resourcefulness and re-invention. This creative preoccupation with a tumultuous city with a long history of extractivism, offers rich grounds for speculating about how discarded personal artefacts - ‘transitory kinship structures’ - become vehicles that enable dreaming of a future within and against the structural failings that mark our present.Nxedlana’s relentless exploration of thrifting as a mapping technique: sporadically visiting, geo-locating, photographing, filming and pinning locations of used clothing stores and markets that intersect with Google Earth screenshots from various angles, re-members the central business district of Johannesburg as a constellation of clothing ecosystems, narratives, bodies, and temporalities against the regimentation of dedicated inventory delivery and stocking days. Film credits: Art direction, filming, editing, colouring by Jamal Nxedlana Sound design by @zamani.xolo Animation by @lextrickett Vocals by @zakhejuluka Contributing editor - @wl.maro Contributing colorist - @paulshiakallis Contributing art director - @lesegohatesart

My exhibition Data Tapestries is open @nomansart . I am pleased to share some installation views as well this quote by Dr Mpho Matsipa(@joburg_bureau ), whose words on the work resonates deeply: Nxedlana’s thrifting-as-method serves as a capacious and generative re-imagining of everyday practices that fundamentally scramble stable identities as well as what it means to refuse the terms given to us. In their most utopian light these textile time capsules might be vessels for world-building and coded information exchange. Although they are coeval with uni-directional toxic infrastructures of global trade and disposal, they nevertheless give rise to experimentation and sub-cultures in music and fashion that are the hallmark of dynamic cities in Africa, and the ambivalence and violence of geopolitical intimacies. In this body of work, Nxedlana offers a momentary reprieve: a tactile, sensory engagement with these textiles in a universe of reciprocal exchanges that are familiar, playful, intimate and strange - perhaps a clearing for meaning-making through a sensorial and philosophical response to complex global systems. Photographs by Jonathan de Waart

Data Tapestries by Jamal Nxedlana is opening today in presence of the artist. Join us from 5-8pm at both gallery locations. Jamal Nxedlana (b. 1985, SA), is an artist and cultural worker. His practice begins with fashion and subculture as domains of intellectual and cultural inquiry, from which to respond to colonial and apartheid legacies in urban South Africa. He has exhibited internationally in galleries, institutions, and independent spaces. Recent exhibitions include SPECTRUM (2023), his second solo exhibition at No Man’s Art Gallery in Amsterdam; The New Black Vanguard (2022) curated by Antwaun Sargent at Saatchi Gallery in London; and Orlando (2022) curated by Tilda Swinton at the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. #jamalnxedlana #solo #nomansart #openingtoday Photo by Jonathan de Waart