Turiya Magadlela South Africa, b. 1978

Turiya Magadlela was born in 1978 in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

Working primarily with common yet loaded fabrics, from pantyhose to correctional service uniforms, Turiya Magadlela creates abstract compositions by cutting, stitching, folding and stretching these materials across wooden frames. Her subject matter moves between articulations of personal experience of woman, motherhood and narratives from Black South African history. By elevating what was once seen as a simple craft to the realm of fine art, she aims at giving voice to the often-overlooked labor of women in her origin region. Her works speak to broader themes of gender, trade, and the African continent's history of colonization and exploitation and uses aesthetics as a tool for storytelling to underscore the importance of art in shedding light on African history and contemporary life.

 

Magadlela studied at the Funda Community College (1998) and the University of Johannesburg (1999 - 2001) in South Africa. She has had six solo exhibitions to date, at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Museum Africa and at blank projects. Magadlela has participated in several group exhibitions, both locally and internationally including Blue Black, curated by Glenn Ligon (Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 2017), Simple Passion, Complex Vision: The Darryl Atwell Collection (Gantt Centre, 2017), The Past is Present (Jack Shainman Gallery, 2017), Les jour qui vient’ curated by Marie-Ann Yemsi (Galerie des Galeries, 2017), Blackness in Abstraction (Pace Gallery, 2016) and The Quiet Violence of Dreams (Stevenson, 2016). In 2015, she was awarded the prestigious FNB Art Prize. 
Turiya has been featured in a list of the top "10 African artists to invest in now" by the TimesLive in 2018, and shortlisted for the Jean-François Prat Prize.