Justice Mukheli

Justice Mukheli is a South African painter, film director, and photographer. Mukheli’s fluid, engulfing compositions are inspired by his upbringing in Soweto, reflecting on a host of themes from masculinity and Blackness to ancestry and spirituality. Mukheli’s process is rapid and his compositions engrossing; taking cues from his past as a photographer he paints contemporary portraits which lapse into the abstract, looking to challenge both our perception of portraiture and what it means to be African. Mukheli attempts to reconnect with his ancestral past—an Africa unshaped by colonization and Christianity and instead built through spirituality. By telling these stories of past, the figures take on a ghost-like quality, in many ways diminished and blurred by the riot of marks engulfing them. For Mukheli, turning to the paintbrush has become a meditative process which allows him to connect with the past—a focus on experience and emotion over documentation. Mukheli’s figures are freed from the shackles of masculinity and the pressures of identity, instead taking on a fluid, somewhat genderless form that is reflective of the spirit. In doing so Mukheli navigates the nuances associated with being a young Black man in a post-internet world, in a way that feels both confident yet shy.