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Shakil Solanki
Recent Monotypes, 2020Solanki interrogates dynamics of intimacy, using the space of a secret garden to explore dualities of tenderness, desire and violence.
Shakil Solanki, 22, was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He has recently completed his fourth, and final year of study at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, and is currently based in Cape Town, practising as an artist.
Solanki completed a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2019, where he majored in the medium of printmaking during his third and fourth years of study. In both 2018 and 2019, he was placed on the Dean’s Merit List for consistent academic excellence. On completion of his degree in 2019, he was awarded the Simon Gerson Award in recognition of outstanding practical work, and the Katrine Harries Print Cabinet Award, for excellent achievement in the printmaking medium. Since 2018, he has taken part in over fifteen group shows, along with several silkscreen-printing jobs, and an internship at the South Atlantic Press in 2020.
Solanki interrogates dynamics of intimacy, using the space of a secret garden to explore dualities of tenderness, desire and violence. His experiences as a queer brown man remain central to his practice, with classical Eastern art standing as a prominent source of inspiration. This vernacular is repurposed, encompassing homoerotic dialogues to evoke lush, dreamlike lands, which remain both romantic and discomforting at once. The trope of a secret garden is used as a liminal space, where contrasting emotions of trauma and longing exist hand-in-hand with moments of stillness, using the theme of intimacy as a point of convergence to explore its many dynamics.
Solanki completed a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2019, where he majored in the medium of printmaking during his third and fourth years of study. In both 2018 and 2019, he was placed on the Dean’s Merit List for consistent academic excellence. On completion of his degree in 2019, he was awarded the Simon Gerson Award in recognition of outstanding practical work, and the Katrine Harries Print Cabinet Award, for excellent achievement in the printmaking medium. Since 2018, he has taken part in over fifteen group shows, along with several silkscreen-printing jobs, and an internship at the South Atlantic Press in 2020.
Solanki interrogates dynamics of intimacy, using the space of a secret garden to explore dualities of tenderness, desire and violence. His experiences as a queer brown man remain central to his practice, with classical Eastern art standing as a prominent source of inspiration. This vernacular is repurposed, encompassing homoerotic dialogues to evoke lush, dreamlike lands, which remain both romantic and discomforting at once. The trope of a secret garden is used as a liminal space, where contrasting emotions of trauma and longing exist hand-in-hand with moments of stillness, using the theme of intimacy as a point of convergence to explore its many dynamics.
Works
Let us go out, bowing to the ocean, a raging current
Monotype on Fabriano Unica
40 x 30 cm
Monotype on Fabriano Unica
40 x 30 cm
From flesh to foliage
Monotype on Fabriano Unica
Paper size: 48 x 33.5 cm
Image size: 29 x 15.6 cm
R2 000
Monotype on Fabriano Unica
Paper size: 48 x 33.5 cm
Image size: 29 x 15.6 cm
R2 000
Process
