Phumulani Ntuli, The Hawker, 2021

Born in Soweto in 1986, Phumulani Ntuli draws on South African histories and contemporary life to create imagined worlds where familiar images take on unexpected meanings. Working across collage, sculpture, film and performance, he explores the boundaries between documentary and fiction. His international recognition includes representing South Africa at the 2022 Venice Biennale alongside Roger Ballen and Lebohang Kganye. Since 2023, he has collaborated with David Krut Projects, extending his practice through experimental printmaking and works on paper. Artist background, Venice Biennale

In The Hawker, a figure rides an inflatable flamingo, transforming a familiar symbol of leisure and abundance into an unlikely vehicle of escape. The bird’s graceful associations and playful appearance are unsettled by the rider’s apparent speed towards an empty, uncertain destination. Inflation introduces the opposing ideas of pressure and constraint, complicating the freedom that the image initially seems to promise.

Ntuli situates this surreal journey within an imagined Johannesburg, drawing on the precarious lives of street hawkers. The figure recalls traders selling prohibited or counterfeit goods who must remain alert to police intervention. Movement becomes a means of survival, while the flamingo’s promise of pleasure sits uneasily beside the urgency of earning a living. Through this encounter between fantasy and urban reality, the work explores the distance between the abundance represented by consumer goods and the insecurity experienced by those who sell them. Artwork details