Sam NhlengethwaAbdullah Ibrahim, 2024
Over the course of his career, Nhlengethwa - dubbed by critics “one of the country’s most celebrated living artists” - has developed a distinctive collage and painting practice while exploring themes common to everyday life in South Africa, the street life, domestic interiors to the influence of mining. Intrinsic to this practice is Nhlengethwa’s love of jazz.
From the age of 15, Nhlengethwa was exposed to the genre through his two older brothers who listened to everything from the classic standards of artists such as Miles Davis and Dave Brubek to the more experimental sounds of Sun Ra, Eric Dolphy and Charles Mingus, to name a few.
“My life belongs to the jazz world because I don’t spend a day in my studio without listening to jazz in the background,” says Nhlengethwa. With a collection of over 4000 vinyls, Nhlengethwa views his records as “art material”, likening the experience of listening while working to a dialogue. “I don’t think I could be who I am, what I’m doing in the art world, if there was no jazz. It is my daily inspiration.”
Prominent jazz musicians have regularly featured in Nhlengethwa’s work over the years. This time around, the artist has widened his scope to incorporate both jazz and blues artists, bringing to the fore previously overlooked historical figures such as Johnny Lee Hooker and BB King.
For Nhlengethwa, this decision reflects his desire to display the full extent of his inspirations. In keeping with this, Jazz and Blues at Night features the first ever public display of pages from Nhlengethwa’s sketchbooks dating back to the 1980s. These drawings form a sort of note taking for Nhlengethwa who would carry along his sketchbooks wherever he went, finding inspiration in jazz clubs, restaurants and buskers on the street. The selected sketches represent over a decade’s worth of these drawings, which themselves served more as ideas for Nhlengethwa than actual blueprints for his work.
