Biography
Based in Johannesburg, Radebe completed a BAFA (Honours) in 2006 at Wits School of the Arts and in 2009 studied for a PGDA in Arts and Cultural Management at the same institution. A solo exhibition, A Walk in the City, was held in 2014 at the National School of the Arts. He has participated in various group exhibitions and art fairs with the most recent being Spier Light Art Festival (2022). The Cape Town International Art Fair(2022). ’Poetic’ land art exhibition, Stellenbosch, (2021). Sculpt-X sculpture fair at Melrose gallery (2019 and 2021). Cubicle Series at Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town (2018). Radebe has been involved in several public interventions; Afrika Burn (2014, 2015 and 2017), Century City Bus Station (2015), 1st International Sculpture Symposium, Bhubaneswar, India (2018) and has executed several public art commissions from 2003 to date. 2019 saw him as part of a team involved with painting the largest mural in South Africa in Johannesburg on Louis Botha Road for the Johannesburg Road Agency facilitated by the Trinity Session. He recently completed a life-size bronze sculpture commission for RMA offices in Johannesburg (2021) Radebe’s pieces are in private and public collections locally and internationally
Artist Statement
Sandile Radebe’s work examines isiZulu material culture as a tool used to relate to the physical and spiritual world. As such, these materials become a medium to transmit isiZulu ontology, epistemology, traditions and proof of events. I focus on isiZulu petroglyphs known as ‘amabheqe’ to distil the logic of how these symbols convey and/or generate a way of relaying information to individuals, the community and the spiritual world; reporting incidents to the ancestors, pleading for their protection, acknowledging important developments in this world and more.
