ARTIST STATEMENT
“With this show, I explored painting in a more impulsive way, focusing less on the image itself and more on the concept of painting and my narrative. My narrative has always been, and continues to be, a reflection of the impact your environment has on you. With each portrait, I aimed to reach the heart of the subject and uncover its soul by embracing a more instinctive approach to painting.”
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Dion Cupido (b. 1973) grew up in Mitchells Plain, South Africa. Largely self-taught, he has journeyed from a teenager creating graffiti on the walls of the Cape Flats to becoming a respected contemporary artist. Cupido discovered his talent for painting in 1990 while helping a friend with a school project, and his first paintings were exhibited in 1998. In 2003, he joined the Arts & Media Access Centre’s (AMAC) professional development program, where he won the Truworths AMAC Academy of the Visual Arts award.
By 2013, ArtSouthAfrica, the continent’s most influential and widely read arts magazine, nominated him as a Bright Young Thing. Around this time, he experienced an important realization about his work: it often evokes thoughts and memories in viewers.
“I realized that our biased memories do more than simply present us with images of our personal history. They also shape our sense of who and what we are. In doing so, they guide us toward forming opinions about ourselves that may not be entirely accurate. As a result, they often limit us to experiencing life only as we think we know it,” says Cupido.
Today, Cupido’s work combines abstraction and portraiture, incorporating street art techniques to delve into themes of memory and identity. Writer and art historian Ashraf Jamal has observed that Cupido “represents the very newly minted post-transitional moment in South African art; a moment in which our dark history and its democratic afterglow are both beside the point.”
Cupido lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.
