Behind the imperial glitz.
A less than glamorous reality.
By Nyadzombe Nyampenza
Night is often associated with secrecy, and evil. Hloniphani Dube sheds light upon the darkness. His work reveals the lives of people who dwell in the shadows of the wealthy.
The Night is Dube’s version of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. The artist flips the script on a pretentious lifestyle of the elites. His painting celebrates the working class. It depicts ordinary men, women, and children. Their clothes look random and informal. The faces are half eclipsed in shadow. Standing with eyes wide open, they look upon their own grim world with dismay.
Dube’s process involves striping away the surface. He creates new layers and pokes holes in them to expose previous layers. By cutting, pasting and redrawing, the artist exposes a story behind the story. White, black, and grey substitute a whole spectrum of colors in the original masterpiece. The inversion of color reflects the reversal of roles in the painting.
Hloniphani’s monochrome painting is a defiant acknowledgment of those who exist on the margins of society. The gilded frame is symbolic of people who maintain the status quo. It is also an ironic reminder of the wealthy patrons who support the art.
