This work is a study of the impressions of red ochre. I’ve dyed, smeared, drawn and performed using this material, as a way of gaining insight into its spiritual and historical memory. Umenzi Uyalibala, Umenziwa Akalibali refers precisely to this deeper history that I feel embedded in this pigment. The prints were made using natural red ochre and red oxide, suggesting a subtle tension between the unspeakable territory of earth's memory against the known human history. They are abstract representations of landscapes, sometimes quiet, sometimes volatile, always in flux just beneath the surface.

Inga Somdyala is a visual artist born in Queenstown, Eastern Cape in 1994 and currently living in Cape Town, South Africa. Somdyala explores aspects of the cultural, political and social negotiations of the post-apartheid generation. Working primarily in print media and installation, his work is an evocative and tactile exploration of isiXhosa cultural history within South African political history as it intersects with his lived experience.

Somdyala has taken part in a number of group exhibitions locally, most recently in Premise with the independent curatorial collective Joe Prussian (2021), Matereality at the Iziko South African National Gallery (2020), the head the hand at blank projects (2019) and AMAQABA Vol. 1 – a collaborative exhibition with Xhanti Zwelendaba at Eclectica Contemporary (2018)

In 2019, Somdyala completed his MFA studies at UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art.