Nkhensani Mkhari – Mavonelo: Perspectives
Opening 29 March 2025
David Krut Projects
The Blue House, 151 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood.
In this series of prints, I interrogate the cartography of perception—how we see, remember, and reconstruct landscapes across cultural and technological interfaces. Drawing from my previous exploration of institutional archives and digital mediations, these works continue to excavate the phenomenological essence of place, but now through a more intimate lens of botanical, geological, and aerial imaginations.
Each print emerges as a palimpsest of perspective: satellite images are layered with botanical morphologies; mountainous terrains are refracted through the lens of cultural memory. I’m fascinated by the radical differences in landscape representation—from the compressed depth of Chinese landscape scrolls to the volumetric perspectives of European landscape painting, from the flat, symbolic representations in indigenous rock art to the algorithmic abstractions of satellite imagery.
The prints challenge traditional Western notions of landscape as a static, conquerable terrain. Instead, they propose landscape as a living dialogue—a constant negotiation between human perception, technological mediation, and ecological complexity. By abstracting these images, I destabilize fixed perspectives, inviting viewers to reimagine how we encounter and interpret spatial narratives.
Each work is titled after its geographical origin, yet resists literal representation. They are less documentations and more conversations—translations of place that speak to the fluid boundaries between observation, memory, and imagination.
