About
Region
South Africa

Over the last four years Thando Mama has been working primarily with video. His concerns are wide-ranging, and encompass the broadly political as well as the formalistic conventions of art. Regarding the latter, Mama uses digital moving imagery in the tradition of portraiture as a performative form of identity.

His work is particularly concerned with the construction and deconstruction of black masculine identities in a postcolonial, post-apartheid South Africa. Mama generally works with images of “blackness” and “Africa”, and scrutinises the means or apparatus by which these images are created.

Thando is currently working on a multi-media video installation for a group exhibition titled ‘Reaching New Frontiers: Contemporary visual and performing art from South Africa’, which will be held in New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Thando Mama is an independent artist and founding member of the artists’ collective Third Eye Vision