Competition Winners

Overall Winner

Lesego Motsiri

Lesego Motsiri lives and practices his fine arts in Bloemfontein, South Africa, where he trained for 4 years for a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Free State. He specializes in drawing, painting, printmaking, photography as a form of art and video art. He is currently experimenting on the relationship between traditional art, new media and digital art.

In 2020, Motsiri’s work was selected for the Art Bank of South Africa for the TIRO YA DIATLA exhibition; and he was also selected as one of the top 13 finalists of WHAT’S THE STORY? , an international photography contest by The Budapest Diary Creative Space. In the same year, he had two online exhibitions named Intangible, Augmentation (3D virtual exhibition) and Level One (wed-page exhibition), for the Vrystaat Kunstefees. In 2016, he took part in the District Six 50th Commemoration Print Exchange hosted by the District Six Art Museum, Cape Town; as well as making it to the semi-finals of the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition.

In addition, Motsiri had a solo exhibition at the Central University of Technology Art Gallery, Bloemfontein, titled The_Black_Season_17 in 2017. The same collection of artworks was used in collaboration with Motlatsi Moeketsi Khotle (choreographer) for a two-hour theater dance production titled Black Season_17, which premiered at the Ernest Oppenheimer Theatre, Bloemfontein, in 2017 and 2018.

Lesego Motsiri is a member of the Free State Art Collective and has taken part in national exhibitions FSAC, Betwixt & Between, an online exhibition LOCKDOWN, A viral art experiment by the Free State Art Collective and the Free State Art Collective exhibition at Gallery 2 in 2021. Motsiri’s work now forms part of the National Art Bank collection and has been bought by collectors around the country.

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Runner Up Winner

Linde Kriel

Award-winning artist Linde Kriel was born in Vanderbijlpark, Gauteng, South Africa, but while growing up moved around all over South Africa. In 2018 he matriculated at Stellenberg High School in Durbanville. After high school he moved to Stellenbosch to study theology at the University of Stellenbosch. After a year he decided to pursue his true passion which is art. He moved to Bloemfontein in 2020 where he started studying BA Fine Arts at the University of the Free State. Currently he is a second year student.

Linde has always had a passion for art and started traditional training when he was in the third grade with high school students. Linde is a multimedia artist that wants to specialize in printmaking mediums. Outside of his studies he likes to paint at a local coffee shop where he sells his work. He works with themes like mental health, gender identity, sexuality and religion. He more recently uses his work as a tool to investigate social issues that he believes aren’t talked about enough in society.

In 2022 he entered an artwork into the Sasol New Signature art  competition. This was his first time entering any competition. He was one of the seven winners with a merit award. His work was exhibited alongside the other finalist in the Pretoria Art Museum. Currently he is working on creating a series of paintings that he is planning on showing at an informal solo exhibition at Iewers Nice in Bloemfontein.

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Merit Award

Marcus Chigawa

I’ve always seen things differently. I’m pretty sure everyone does. My experiences have allowed me to express these memories through song and paint. I believe there is a song for every feeling that we have felt and every place that we have been to. Music has allowed me to express these feelings and articulate them through painting; my stories. I can only tell these stories the only way I know how to and every day, I get closer to these uncovering the truths that these stories will eventually tell. I am an artist but most importantly, I am a storyteller.

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Merit Award

Poloko (PK) Mohanoe

PK Mohanoe is a Lesotho born and South African raised artist. He studied Visual Arts and Design at Motheo TVET College where he obtained his N6 Certificate in 2017 and he also studied Fine Arts at the University of the Free State where he obtained his BA Fine Arts degree in 2022. PK works part-time during the weekends at a delivery company when he is not working on his art. In doing this part-time work, the artist started to recognise and identify a conceptual underpinning for his artistic practice (and labour) in the hard labour that South African people go through in order to survive. In his art, he works with
different types of mediums, but mainly photography, at different types of working sites which he draws his inspiration of hard labour from.

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Public Choice Award

Thamsanga Michael Mfuphi

Thamsanga Mfuphi is a self-taught artist born in 1998 in rural areas of KwaZulu Natal in Estcourt, currently based and working in Harrismith. After the death of his mother in 2002, he moved to stay with his stepmother’s family in Zimbabwe, where he learned life lessons the hard way, being a victim of child abuse, being denied a chance to go to school like any other kid, going weeks without anything to eat, at times, being chased out from the place he considered home.

These are amongst the challenges he faced throughout the 13 years he lived in Zimbabwe. This was the  birth of his talent and gift as he normally used it to heal, find peace and tell his journey through the  use of materials he related to/ was surrounded by, and materials that best described his condition.

Matriculated in 2017. He then went to further his studies at the University of Johannesburg, within the School of Business and Economics where he was institutionalized for a Bachelor of Commerce in Business Management and he obtained his qualification in record time. His motive in studying towards this qualification was to get an understanding of the business industry and gather information that would turn his talent into a successful career and a business. After obtaining a business management qualification he then went further to polish his art skills and techniques at Artist Proof Studio.

He aims at equipping himself with certain competencies that will enable him to contribute to the development of a professional culture of printmaking within the Visual Arts and production of artworks that aligns with his style and is underpinned by the applied knowledge he gained in both Printmaking and  drawing at Artist Proof Studio.

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Digital Art Award Winner

Linde Kriel

Award-winning artist Linde Kriel was born in Vanderbijlpark, Gauteng, South Africa, but while growing up moved around all over South Africa. In 2018 he matriculated at Stellenberg High School in Durbanville. After high school he moved to Stellenbosch to study theology at the University of Stellenbosch. After a year he decided to pursue his true passion which is art. He moved to Bloemfontein in 2020 where he started studying BA Fine Arts at the University of the Free State. Currently he is a second year student.

Linde has always had a passion for art and started traditional training when he was in the third grade with high school students. Linde is a multimedia artist that wants to specialize in printmaking mediums. Outside of his studies he likes to paint at a local coffee shop where he sells his work. He works with themes like mental health, gender identity, sexuality and religion. He more recently uses his work as a tool to investigate social issues that he believes aren’t talked about enough in society.

In 2022 he entered an artwork into the Sasol New Signature art  competition. This was his first time entering any competition. He was one of the seven winners with a merit award. His work was exhibited alongside the other finalist in the Pretoria Art Museum. Currently he is working on creating a series of paintings that he is planning on showing at an informal solo exhibition at Iewers Nice in Bloemfontein.

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Judges

Isabelle Grobler

Isabelle Grobler was born in Pretoria and grew up in Bloemfontein where she spent her childhood years between the family farm and town. After a long sports career in hockey, she completed her BA degree in Fine Art at the University of the Free State in 2009 and her Master of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2012. Specialising in installation and drawing, she has had solo exhibitions in South Africa, the UK and Israel. Participating in fairs including Art15 in London, AKAA in Paris, TAF and CTAF in South Africa. In 2019 she was part of a group exhibition at the Zeitz MOCCA called And So The Stories Ran Away and her work has sold at the Piasa Auction in Paris and she also has work in two collections: the Tiroche-Deleon art collection and the South African Art Bank.


Grobler is also involved in theatre and performance. She is currently part of a growing community project called the Bloem Clown Troop where she made and performed a large puppet at the Vryfees.  Passionate about education in the arts, she is currently a part-time lecturer at the University of the Free State.

Nandipha Mntambo

Nandipha Mntambo completed a Master’s in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2007. She is currently based in Johannesburg. Mntambo originally intended to study forensic pathology but found her way to Fine Arts in an unusual, but fortunate, shift in her career trajectory. Within her sculpture, photography, video and mixed media works, Mntambo’s acute interest in the human body is evident.
 
Mntambo is perhaps best known for her cowhide sculptures - with the cured hide draped over human forms and set with resin - which confront and question the relationship between humans and animals. These investigations into organic nature and the corporeal address issues relating to performance, gender, identity, life and death.

 

Ruzy Rusike

Ruzy Rusike is an artist, curator and social activist. She currently working as the Head Curator at The Melrose Gallery having also previously worked at the South African Foundation for Contemporary Art (S.A.F.F.C.A) as the Head of Communication and Curator in South Africa and France.

Rusike has curated local and international exhibitions such as Azibuyele Emasisweni (Return to the Source) Pitika Ntuli's seminal exhibition that opened online in 2021 and is currently on tour having travelled to Oliewenhuis Art Museum (2022) and is now at the Durban Art Gallery (2023). Rusike has also curated Esther Mahlangu 85, Johannesburg, South Africa (2021), Ubuntusim Re-Enchanted, Palazzo Bembo, Venice, Italy (2019). | This landscape. This landscape! The Quintessential Metaphor for Life Tribute Exhibition to David Koloane, RMB Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa in collaboration with LL Editions (2018) | Towards Intersections: Negotiating Subjects, Objects and Contexts UNISA Art Gallery, Pretoria, Museum Africa, Newtown, Johannesburg and Gordon Institute of Business Science, Hyde Park, Johannesburg (Curatorial researcher and Exhibition co-ordinator) Curated by Thembinkosi Goniwe,

Rusike writings have been published in A Resilient Visionary Poetic Expressions of David Koloane Editor: Thembinkosi Goniwe. Published by the Standard Bank of South Africa Limited, 2019