In its inaugural year, the KZN Art Fair introduces the KZN Art Fair Artist Spotlight, an annual feature recognising an artist with strong connections to KwaZulu-Natal whose practice has achieved significant recognition.

Each year, the Artist Spotlight will foreground the work and trajectory of an artist who has emerged from, worked within, or been shaped by KwaZulu-Natal. The feature celebrates both the artist’s practice and their journey, while recognising the role that the province and its creative communities have played within their development.

This year’s Artist Spotlight is Mmangaliso Nzuza.

Mmangaliso Nzuza (b. 1998, Empangeni, South Africa) is a Cape Town-based painter whose large-scale oil paintings depict angular figurative compositions that merge the familiar and imagined. Nzuza began developing his artistic practice while at Hilton College in KwaZulu-Natal, where he matriculated in 2016. After completing an MA (Hons) in Government, Policy and Society at the University of Edinburgh in 2022, he returned to South Africa to pursue a career as an artist.

His distinctive visual language recalls early Cubism, with fragmented, sculptural bodies used to explore vulnerability, presence and human connection. Drawing on allegory, colour theory and gestural mark-making, Nzuza’s portraits and still lifes explore community and subjectivity, and the ways in which we navigate the relationship between self and other. Nzuza has presented two solo exhibitions with Southern Guild, in 2024 and 2026.

As The Red-Eyed Dove Sings

2025

190CM x 190CM x 7.5CM

Oil on Belgian Linen

Private Collection

Nzuza is represented by Southern Guild (Cape Town | New York)