Swazi-born artist and gallerist Banele Khoza has produced a new series of stunning works, reflecting a quantum leap in his artistic practice, during a three-month Victoria House residency with the Tracey Emin Foundation in the UK. The large-scale, oil-on-canvas landscapes of France and Margate are especially breathtaking. Both Khoza and Emin — one of the most important artists of her generation — are incredibly proud of these works, which Emin has curated for his current exhibition at the foundation in Margate.
The 10m x 1.85m painting You Have to Face the Dark to Meet the Light, created at Claude Monet’s home in Giverny, is the highlight of this output, and sums up the personal and professional development Khoza underwent during the residency — an experience he describes as cathartic but liberating.
Before, Khoza painted critically acclaimed but much smaller works. A natural introvert, he admits he can have the personality of a “wallflower”. It is no understatement to say he has really blossomed in Margate.
But personal growth can be uncomfortable for anyone, and requires a willingness to shift perspective.
“When I was done with the painting I actually cried … I just sat in the gallery and watched it. In being a wallflower, you are hiding in order not to be seen, but you are observing everything, and then all of a sudden you are taking up so much space in a gallery — taking up a whole wall with just one painting. I felt like I was coming into myself,” he says.
Several other works in the series depict seascapes and landscapes, with a nod to Monet and William Turner but a visual language entirely his own.
We discussed his time at the residency in the context of the “Black mundane”, which offers radical respite for Black artists from the often oppressive need to perform “Black excellence”. In this respect, the residency was dualistic. On the one hand, it was a period of repose while, on the other, it allowed him the focus to throw himself into his process. He experienced this as a continuous tension between respite and performance, and tells me that he realised that his continuous striving for excellence, and the need to express this as productivity and performance, is a trauma response.
It is not only this dimension of personal struggle that makes the accomplishment all the more meaningful for Khoza. The residency also follows a seven-year hiatus/gestation in which he didn’t produce as much and was instead busy holding space for emerging artists at his BKhz Gallery in Keyes Art Mile, Joburg.
Says Khoza: “Essentially, those seven years were devoted to extending the table, adding chairs for other artists because, in 2018, I was doing a residency in Paris and thought, ‘You’ve been hosted, and you’re all by yourself in this world.’ I didn’t want to be by myself and, in my success, wanted to see other artists with me. It’s very easy to be self-absorbed and hyper-focused, and in that hyper-vision you’re not seeing your community, that they’re not also in the space you’re occupying. So, by 2021, we had travelled with eight creatives with the gallery and brought them to Paris. That felt like the manifestation of what I desired, to see other creatives going beyond South Africa and creating a market value for their work.”
Things have come full circle, with Khoza benefiting from Emin’s similar marriage to service, holding space for other artists to develop their practice with her. Emin is an absolute giant in the art world and her generosity of spirit is legendary. It is easy to understand why the alchemy of Khoza and Emin has resulted in work of this calibre.
He explains that he walked into the residency hoping to get a resolve on his artistic voice after a long period of self-doubt. Margate allowed him to become accustomed to his own voice while learning a new vocab. His work reflects the cosmopolitan experiences that have helped to shape him, including his time in Europe. Their aesthetic will be accessible to a global audience and hint at a greatness that is just beginning to be unleashed. For now, he is looking forward to showing the series at Frieze London with Goodman Gallery.
From the October issue of Wanted, 2025
