Rehearsing the Future: Inside Katlego Tlabela’s Living Cultural Archive, Where Manifestation Becomes History

When you first see Katlego Tlabela’s work, you might be struck by the glamour. The polished interiors. The symbols of power. The confidence. But stay with it, well, that is what I did. Born in 1993, Katlego Tlabela is a multidisciplinary South African artist who uses socio-political surrealism to document a specific sociological shift. The rise of the Black elite and middle class. He does this by blending hyper-realistic, aspirational settings of opulence and power with dreamlike visual qualities—an honourable tribute to the black diamond generation (Andropoulos, 2020)

Artist, Katlego Tlabela, 2025. Courtesy of the artist’s Instagram.

Early in his career, Tlabela’s archive was heavy with the grit of photocopy transfers and the political weight of the panga. When Tlabela introduces the Negro Sunshine, he doesn’t just borrow the phrase; he weaponizes it. By shifting from the monochromatic grey of South African struggle-era printmaking into the electric, saturated world of the Negro Sunshine, he archives a Blackness that emits light rather than just absorbing it. It serves as a rejection of the "greyness" of traditional struggle-era documentary photography, which archives the emotional landscape of post-apartheid freedom.

The works that follow this shift feature a more vibrant colour palette and a rekindling of his younger self (Kgasane, 2021). In an interview with Palesa Kgasane (2021), Tlabela describes that the shift additionally came from a desire for creative liberation, which translates as a visual frequency of joy and manifestation, unmistakably seen in Tableau Vivant III: Oasis (Tlabela, c.2020).

Katlego Tlabela, Tableau Vivant III: Oasis, c. 2020. Acrylic, ink, collage on canvas, 2310 x 770 x 35mm. Courtesy of the artist’s Instagram.

Sanctuary II (New Masters) (Tlabela, c.2025) advances this logic visually with the painting characterised by an aggressive neatness. The foreground of the painting includes an open, empty chair, inviting the viewer to imagine themselves as the owner. The composition turns the painting into a portal for the viewer’s own aspirations by creating a "spatial archive" where the viewer is invited to inhabit the wealth. An affect that I acquired when I first encountered his works that are featured in the One and the Many (2025) exhibition.

Katlego Tlabela, Sanctuary II (New Masters), c. 2025. Acrylic, ink, foam board, Belgian linen, collage on cotton duck canvas, 910 x 910x 50mm. Courtesy of the artist’s Instagram. 

The spatial archive is not just a room; it is a conversation. Featured in the middle cabinet is a reimagination of The Creation of Adam, which was painted in c.1508–1512 by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. By painting specific historical paintings, which are often artworks by other Black artists on the walls of his painted rooms, he creates a spatial sovereignty where black people are the curators, collectors, and creators of their own narrative. He builds an archive that acknowledges its own community and lineage, becoming a living conversation between artists across generations.

Tlabela’s canvas functions as a high-definition site of digital alchemy, where the memories and ambitions of various generations are transmuted into a “living” cultural archive. A freezing of the digital archive, if you may. Influenced by his printmaking foundation and Instagram from his research process, his paintings are characterised by emitted light that mimics the backlit saturation of a smartphone screen, making his works feel like they exist in a digital “cloud” (Abrahams, 2023).

Ultimately, Tlabela’s practice serves as a digital alchemy that fuses the motivity of manifestation with the permanence of a static record. By translating the essence of the ephemeral aspirations of the cloud into a living cultural archive, he ensures that this era of private peace and material agency is no longer a temporary desire, but rather a fixed and radiant historical fact. Becoming a visual blueprint for the viewer—a rehearsal for the future.

Sources consulted:

• Abrahams, E. 2023. Katlego Tlabela I 2023. [Online Video]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzNgpT8qgvo&pp=ygUPa2F0bGVnbyB0bGFiZWxh 

• Andropoulos, P. 2020. From printmaking to painting, Katlego Tlabela pushes his artistic limits in his work. 

• Janse van Rensburg, S. 2025-2026. One and the Many [Exhibition]. Javett-UP, Pretoria. 24 July 2025- 30 April 2026. 

• Kgasane, P. 2021. Artists we love: Katlego Tlabela.