NYAB Event - Mustafa Maluka "A Place So Foreign"

Mustafa Maluka "A Place So Foreign"

Tilton Gallery

This event has ended.

The Tilton Gallery presents the first New York solo exhibition of new works by painter Mustafa Maluka.

Known for theatrically confronting the intersection of contemporary critical theory and global politics with his provocative large-scale portraits, "A Place So Foreign" is the artist's first solo exhibition at the Tilton Gallery.

Born in 1976, Mustafa Maluka grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, but came of age in Amsterdam, the Netherlands where he studied at De Ateliers postgraduate art institute and the University of Amsterdam. He lives and works between Helsinki and New York.

The faces of his transnational, racially and sexually ambiguous characters are densely painted. He achieves this by building up layers of splashes and washes on the canvas surface alongside bold patterns and forms that determine the mood and overall tone of the works.

The title for this exhibition refers to the artist’s own experience as a global citizen, where cultures morph and merge so quickly that even home is no longer a stable or recognizable place. Maluka likens his solo shows to putting on a play. This show thus presents an emotional landscapes filled with a cast of characters who like the artist himself inhabit Plural Worlds.

Mustafa Maluka has recently been included in Flow at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Sao Paolo Bienal, and in World Histories at the Des Moines Art Center.