Open Letter to God
2000
Digital giclee print on canvas
2000-23-2, purchased with funds provided by the Annie Laurie Aitken Endowment

b. 1960, South Africa

Zwelethu Mthethwa began his career as a painter and has since received international recognition for his vivid pastels and photography.

Mthethwa ennobles even the humblest scene and subject, negating images of urban life as harsh and unjust. His subjects speak of human dignity, self-awareness and resistance in the face of life’s challenges. These works gain poignancy as a product of and witness to the post-apartheid era in which political fortunes may have changed, but the dehumanizing, debilitating situation faced by many of Cape Town’s rural migrants have not.

Best known for his large-format color photography, the works exhibited demonstrate Mthethwa’s mastery of multiple media. He considers painting and photography to be equally important and is continually transferring notions from one to the other. Many of his compositions—whether in paint, pastel or photography evoke the influence of television and sequential perception.

Mthethwa has also experimented with black-and-white imagery. In Open Letter to God children are presented as silent, helpless witnesses to and victims of AIDS in South Africa. The artist’s choice of black and white immediately brings to mind photojournalism and documentary photography and suggests a solemnity appropriate for the subject.

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