Giggs Kgole South African, b. 1997

Giggs Kgonamotse Kgole, formally known as Kgole, was born in Kutupu Village in Limpopo in 1997 and grew up in Tembisa, Johannesburg. In grade six he applied for a scholarship with the Student Sponsorship Program (SSP). From a pool of 3000 applicants, he was one of 25 who earned a full scholarship, then attended the prestigious St John’s College in Houghton, where he completed high school.

He considers this a great achievement for himself and his family, as not only was he the first person to attend a private high school, but the first in his family to reach and pass Matric.

In 2017, a year after Kgole’s first Solo exhibition he received a Prestigious Presidential Scholarship to study in Rome at John Cabot University, where he had his first solo showcase in Europe titled ‘Before the High Walls’.  2018 marked a new feet for Kgole as he became one of Africa’s youngest gallery owners at the age of 21. GasLamp Gallery, located Johannesburg, South Africa was a contemporary art space for creatives who needed an opportunity to tell their stories in a commercial gallery.

In 2019, Kgole spent six months in France, in a residency organized by Undiscovered Canvas. Kgole was named as the Mail and Guardian’s Top 200 young South Africans, Kgole has also won the People’s choice awards for his masterpiece, “God Ke Mama”, which was the catalogue cover of the 10th Anniversary Young Masters Art Prize in London. Passionate about life, inspiring others and marking his name in history, Kgole continues to make enormous strides and take on the art world, one masterpiece at a time.

Kgole’s work is an exposition of the interplay between the identities of people living in rural Limpopo, his ancestors and the world he inhabits. The artist grew up in a Limpopo village, South Africa and tells vivid human stories about the experiences of people who live there. They are stories that are untold to an urban audience, to whom rural South Africa is a hidden landscape.

They tell tales of struggle, of abandonment, of promises broken and dreams deferred. They speak of resilience in the face of everyday injustice, of resistance through the simple act of living. Resilience of which he goes through daily as a young village boy maturing in the world’s different metropolises. These stories are told through his visions or the locations where these people live out their lives – the landscapes upon which the all too human residue of life settles.

Kgole’s work is typified by his use of Anaglyphs, whereby two versions of his composite photographic images are printed in different colours (typically blue and red) onto canvas. He then applies collage and paint to the printed work. The viewer is then asked to view the work through glasses with a red filter and a blue filter as lenses, creating a dramatic 3D effect.

The glasses play the role of enhancing the viewer’s experience and relationship to the work, as it helps you interact with the work more at a more intimate level.