SKETCHING LIFE: Ntsikelelo Mzibomvu and the fine art of real-time drawing

It takes a certain bold artistry, if not a touch of madness, to arrive at a public event with a blank canvas, draw the event as it unfolds and end up with a finished artwork.

That’s exactly what Ntsikelelo Mzibomvu does. Part real-time sketching, part performance art, this is his signature storytelling in motion.

When Jozi My Jozi held its inaugural Main Street Sundays recently, the road was closed to traffic and 5,000 people came to walk, play and connect in the inner city. Mzibomvu arrived with an easel and a blank canvas, and sat himself down on the street to draw the day as it happened. He had a great spot, next to Radio 702’s outside broadcast hub, looking down the length of Main Street towards Gandhi Square as the people’s fiesta happily unfolded.

Passersby were intrigued. People lingered to watch him work, asked him questions – how do you start with nothing and then come up with something in a few hours that distils the essence of what you see? – and they kept coming back to see how he’d progressed.

“It’s serious pressure,” says Mzibomvu, “but it’s also really liberating. I’m exposing my soul and my vulnerability and at the same time, overcoming my fears and turning them into cultural expression.”

He works with charcoal and graphite, and, by the close of the day, had produced a powerful abstract expressionist artwork of Main Street with its distinctive buildings and trees with the people symbolised as dancing musical notes.

“Art is becoming experiential,” explains Mzibomvu. “Other genres, like music, are more engaging. People work in a studio and then get onto a stage to perform, and I started to see an opportunity for live art performances, physical art in real time where people could … observe and participate.”

An impromptu start

His first performance was at the Market Theatre last year in collaboration with the Judah Music Factory and Sifiso Khanyile. “We’d talked about the possibility of me doing a real-time performance at one of their upcoming concerts, basically synchronising live sketching with live musical production.

"We’d been a bit vague on details and then on the morning of the concert, I got told to bring my stuff along. I had to jump right into the cold pond. I was sitting on the stage with a camera and lights on me, while the music was being performed to my right.”

Mzibomvu blends raw visual expressionism with unscripted musical alignment, corporate dialogue or theatrical performance. He did a performance at Melrose Arch for the Trevor Noah Foundation, and he’s done two live art activations at Constitution Hill, the first one at the Amahubo Symphony, and then later, during the Mayonie Open Air concert.

“Mayonie was dramatic,” he says. “It was stopped twice due to rain, so every time I had to quickly bubble wrap the artwork – rain is not a friend of charcoal –and huddle inside the security guard’s hut clutching my painting.”

Growing confidence

Mzibomvu grew up in Springs, Ekurhuleni, where he learned drawing from his uncle, who was an art teacher at the local library, but is largely self-taught. The Covid pandemic gave him the impetus to get serious, he says, as he had time on his hands and the confidence to take his art to new places.

He lives and works at Ellis House in New Doornfontein, which is home to about 30 emerging and established creatives. The building was converted from a light industrial textile factory into a five-storey contemporary art collective in 2012 by developer Ian Blacher, and features high ceilings, wide factory windows and natural light.

His art and writing – he wrote a book called Reimagining Myself – address fatherhood, modern masculinity and personal transformation after a journey with depression. Mzimbomvu has also created a collection of wearable art including hoodies and tees that support his social impact projects. DM

Check out Ntsikelelo Mzimbomvu’s Instagram @ntsikelelomzibomvu_art.

Bridget Hilton-Barber is a freelance writer who writes for Jozi My Jozi.

This story first appeared in our weekly Daily Maverick 168 newspaper, which is available countrywide for R35.