Happiest birthday to my love, my best love, my favourite love❤️ @rez_inyanzi I can’t believe I know and love an incredible human like you 🥹🤍your wonders never cease to amaze me, just when I think I have you figured out; you show me another incredible thing to you. I love just how effortlessly multifaceted you are, life with you is such a joyride. Thank you for being such a fierce lover who loves without fear or thinking twice, for being such a forgiving spirit and a great teacher. You teach me so much, and each lesson is a reminder of why I chose you. Your creativity is endless, fearless and contagious. You have an incredibly curious spirit and it makes you the most special being and leads you to always trying new things! May that spirit never age in you but only mature. You do amazing things with your hands, the most amazing food, art, music, (perfect joints 🤣), everything you touch becomes gold. Thank you for shining and turning into gold the best parts of me. So grateful for the kind person and sharer you are, no matter how little you have, you share. Thank you for being a man of your word, for always encouraging and pushing me towards my best self. Wishing you a beautiful new year, filled with blessings, dream come trues, prosperity and incredible experiences. I love you this lifetime and another🥹❤️😘😘😘😘😘😘
I missed my art and my art missed me, but all the things I do when I’m away from it feed my practice.
I’m so grateful for the time off spent on my piece of the Earth this January—feeding my practice, resting, recharging, reflecting, and returning to self, through even the most mundane of things.
Truly grateful to share this life with @rez_inyanzi and for the time we spent making this place a home and preparing for a time where we would finally not need to be in the city to make and sell our art, especially as the land has proven to hold all our life’s blessings.
Watching this dream come true, slowly but surely, has been immensely rewarding, not to mention how addictive this place is. There’s honestly no place I’d rather be. For now, let me figure out how to distil the experience through a select few images.
Chosi
Photo dump 1/3
‘Ungumntu Ngabanye’ 2025 Art Unveiling!
It is with great excitement and deep gratitude that I share the news of my recent art commission by The Wits School of Architecture and Planning, where the work now forms part of their permanent collection.
This work, like every mural I create, marks a significant milestone in my artistic journey. Its presence within the new SoAP building carries profound meaning, as umgwalo and architecture have always shared an intentional relationship, one deeply rooted in the Ndzundza Ndebele women’s practice of merging the acts of building with that of painting. From the shaping of the walls to the designs that adorn them, our architectural imagination has always held the vision of the Umgwalo.
This placement also holds symbolic weight. My people’s hands have always built majestic institutions of learning, designed with such architectural excellence, yet our presence within them was long denied. Through this work, as with much of my practice rooted in healing, reparation, reclamation, ancestral identity& belonging, and storytelling, seeks to shift that positionality, to allow my people to be visible, centered, celebrated, and remembered.
This piece celebrates our humanity, community, and collaboration. It is a call to action: to love, to care, and to remember one another. It honors Ubuntu, a framework my people have lived by for generations.
My heartfelt gratitude to the Wits School of Architecture and Planning for seeing me in this way, for affirming my work and its place in this institution.
May this work inspire everyone who encounters it.
Chosi.
#umgwalo #umgwaliwentsha #sanaking #bomgwalo #architechture #witsschoolofarchitectureandplanning #artunveiling
Behind the scenes of the making of ‘Ungumtu Ngabaye’, the largest work I’ve made on canvas yet.
What makes this work so special is having created it in my grandmother’s home, and her involvement throughout the duration of the project, which felt like a true return to the matriarch, the initial makers of Umgwalo.
The world has seen me make a mural in a gallery, my mom has witnessed me create one for her in our home but the person who hadn’t experienced this was my grandmother. The time we spent together during this project was so amazing, her feedback, applause, encouragement, questions, curiosity, helping with wrapping the work and blessing it before it travelled.
I find it so important for those abasizalile bazolula ngathi to experience how far they’ve stretched through us. Seeing themselves in us, doing things they never imagined we would do.
Kuyanda ❤️
#BoMgwalo #bts #sanakingart
A few BTS moments while documenting the sculptural figures from BoMgwalo. These works continue to teach me about form, community, and patience.
#BoMgwalo #umgwali #sanaking #dzila #umgwaliwentsha #exhibition #artphotography #instareels
On show as part of ‘Flatland: Drawing Depth’ @thegalleryjhb , 44 Stanley
#FlatlandDrawingDepth #TheGalleryJHB #44Stanley #SouthAfricanArt #JoburgArtScene #ContemporaryArt #DrawingExhibition
BoMgwalo Abasoze Bahlukaniswa
2025
Acrylic on Canvas
40,5 x 55,5cm
Available
This series reflects on the way Abagwali live with one another. It is about depicting their refusal to abandon ukuphila ngobuntu — the way of life rooted in humanity. It explores how they insist on community, on helping one another, as a means of forging the very society they live in.
It is also about expressing the consciousness of Umgwalo beyond the physical, showing that it carries more than beauty, embodying instead the value systems of the Abagwali.
Chosi
Izandla Ziyagezana/ Izandla Zabagwali Ziyagezana, 2025
Acrylic on Canvas
50 x 60cm
A lot of my artwork titles borrow from Nguni proverbs and sayings, simply because of the profound meanings and lessons found in them, but also as a form of celebration and preservation of this wisdom.
This for me is an important knowledge system and history recording technology— that has allowed our people a way to pass down knowledge and the wisdom that governs our lives, from generation to generation.
One of the things that was most prevelant in the community of women/Abagwali I got the honour to learn from, was ubuntu, inhlonipho, care for one another and a deep sense of ukuphilisana.
This work, is inspired by that philosophy, and experience—that truly izandla Ziyagezana. What I find particularly interesting about this piece is what is happening above the two figures— the forms look like light bulbs which I translate as how the light of others can provide us with light in times of need. The forms also look like a pair of eyes, which makes me think of the saying “kunye, Ngabe kubili Ngabe kuyavusana”, here I am reminded of the power of having assistance— how two is better than one because when the eyes of one fail, the other can step in.
In essence, this piece was inspired by real and profound humanity, especially in this time of modernity and civilisation that believes in individuality. It is a reminder for us to remember community, to remember ubuntu, to assist each other ekugezisaneni izandla.
Chosi
Hanging art is such a pedantic process—everything needs to be precise, otherwise it feels disturbing to the eye.
The undergrad crits were the perfect training ground to sharpen this skill. Still, every time I hang work, it feels like starting from scratch.
There are many things I learnt about myself through my art. I know I enjoy making my own canvases, priming them, and of course creating the work itself. But I also know that hanging the art is not my favourite part, but also know that in exhibition-making, once the work is up, the show is complete!
Thank you @rez_inyanzi for hanging the work with me—you made it all go seamlessly.
Chosi
