Perreault Magazine - 80 -
Painting with Plastic
Mbongeni Buthelezi is an artist from Johannesburg, South Africa, who collects rubbish and gives it a new life through his art. The material that Mbongeni Buthelezi uses for his "paintings" is always waste made of plastic: he cuts it into little pieces and glues them onto the canvas, creating surfaces and structures with subtle and changing tones and colors. The use of such material shows Buthelezi's awareness of environmental problems and the physical decay of the townships as well as the references to general social and political impoverishment and flaw of opportunities and alternatives that he observes in South Africa.
Mbongeni Buthelezi
ART
AND PLASTIC