CINGA SAMSON by Cinga Samson

A monograph on the work of South African artist Cinga Samson. Published in conjunction with his exhibition at WHITE CUBE MAISON'S YARD in London from July to August 2023.

The artist's work possesses hallucinatory and ceremonial qualities, speaking to the fusion of material and metaphysical realms. This ritualistic composition is rendered in intricate detail across the entire surface through complex gestures, where a privileging of communal belonging often evokes a mysterious and surreal atmosphere.

Includes texts by journalist and cultural critic Lwandile Fikeni and art historian Tamar Garb. Designed by London-based Ard.works.

A monograph on Cinga Samson, featuring the South African artist’s dreamlike large-scale tableaux and enigmatic portraits, is published on the occasion of his solo exhibition at White Cube Mason’s Yard, London (7 July – 26 August 2023). 

Possessing qualities at turns hallucinatory and ceremonial, Samson’s work speaks to the fusion of material and metaphysical realms. Numerous full-bleed details display the complex gestures at work in Samson’s ritualistic compositions, where a privileging of communal belonging often invokes a mysterious, funereal atmosphere. Navigating the unknown, the devotional and divine, an essay by Lwandile Fikeni responds to Samson’s interest in the spiritual and philosophical systems of amaXhosa and their native language of isiXhosa – where Fikeni finds ‘a multidimensional system at play’ likewise present within Samson’s paintings. An essay by Tamar Garb explores the artist’s work and its relation to place. Despite the seemingly specific context of Cape Town’s urban landscape, Garb situates this hyperreal yet oneiric figuration in a space between the real and the imagined.

Designed by Ard.works, the monograph features detailed reproductions of Samson’s cryptic portraits and scenes of collectivity. Interspersed are a sequence of studio photographs printed with inverse colouration which provide glancing notice of the meticulous and methodical labour involved in the artist’s work.