Simphiwe Ndzube (b. 1990, Hofmeyr, Eastern Cape) is a South African artist working and living in Los Angeles, California, and Cape Town, South Africa. He has a BA Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.
Ndzube’s work is characterized by a fundamental interplay between objects, media and two-dimensional surfaces; stitching together a subjective account of the Black experience in past and present-day South Africa from a mythological perspective.
Narrative influences include Ben Okri, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Gabriel García Márquez, Italo Calvino, and Zakes Mda. In particular, Ndzube highlights Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community by Wendy B Faris and Lois Parkinson Zamora, which describes magical realism as "a mode suited to exploring—and transgressing—boundaries, whether the boundaries are ontological, political, geographical or generic. [It] facilitates the fusion, or coexistence, of possible worlds, spaces, [and] systems that would be irreconcilable in other modes
