Ballad of the Peacock

On Archetype and Adornment: Mmangaliso Nzuza’s Ballad of the Peacock

Mmangaliso Nzuza’s Ballad of the Peacock is imagined across a series of scenes that recall canonical moments in western art, nod to contemporary Black practices and fashion histories, or gesture homeward to the stillness of Nongoma, KwaZulu-Natal. Across this plurality of settings, what remains nearly constant is the haunting of a singular presence: a bold yet quiet character or figure who occupies the field and easily absorbs – or perhaps even revels in – the viewers’ attention.

Nzuza’s character repeats itself almost compulsively, its likeness shapeshifting and multiplying across canvases, staring into distant natural landscapes or pensively regarding those looking in from the other side. At times, this presence appears as a fashionable man, a languishing woman, or a figure leading livestock, while at others, it multiplies, becoming a huddled group staged against a natural backdrop, regarding onlookers from its many near-identical faces. Despite exuding ease, the character is insistent, structuring the viewer’s reading of the scenography through its unyielding presence.

While Nzuza imagines his canvases as a domain for the articulation of his inner world, whether or not this character constitutes an unconscious exercise in self-portraiture remains unknowable. But what does seem certain, formally or psychically, is the artist’s strict separation of figure from field. The figures resist blending with the scene, asserting a strong will for definition – of the self, of the world, or both. Rendered with sure, dark outlines and filled with impressionist-inspired blending and cubist-inflected blocking, Nzuza’s figures are at once painterly and highly stylised; free, yet ultimately contained.

The works in Ballad of the Peacock reveal a sustained interest in clothing and textile design. Flat fields of patterned fabric, drawn from the many fashion magazines scattered across Nzuza’s studio, are inserted into the picture plane, subtly disrupting its regular dimensionality in a manner reminiscent of collage. Song of the Second Skin, for example, depicts three men with their bellies comfortably out, dressed in identical brown pinstriped pants and set against a bare mountainscape. In Mosaic, a tightly grouped assembly of figures is differentiated through an interplay of vertical stripes, geometric prints, and blocks of solid colour.

In fashion, to “peacock” is to perform via adornment, to decorate oneself in an attempt to attract attention. To peacock is to wear a “second skin” and enter a space that is emboldened by the armour of dress, but also vulnerable in its transparent hope for recognition or affection. Rituals of dressing and grooming, explored in works like Pale Resonance and Acts of Service, meditate in this soft, transitional space of “getting ready.” Through fashion, these figures prepare to be seen – leaning into or defying social and cultural norms, aspiring to embody future selves, or presenting self-assured alter-egos.

In What the Gaze Cannot Touch, the figure (a woman) is in a relaxed pose on the ground, her head up, eyes caught on something in the distance, body swivelled towards the viewer, supported by a strong forearm. She is foregrounded by an artfully lit box of lemons, two of which have scattered off to the near-centre of the lower frame. Although she is clothed in a short, black dress, her pose recalls the familiar motif of the reclining female nude, a subject with a significant popular history – as well as a tradition of undoing – in the western canon. Of course, Edouard Manet’s Olympia (1863) most famously represents one such undoing, depicting a nude white sex worker whose gaze is not averted, as would be historically typical. Olympia stares back at the viewer in quiet defiance. Yet, while this depiction is emblematic of a break in genre, the work’s uninvestigated burden is in its quiet sustenance of racism. The fierce Olympia is waited upon by an anonymous Black maid, who disappears into the background, and whose gaze is fixed upon the madam, her continued non-subjectivity suggesting that women’s agency at the time remained in the hands of empire, of whiteness.

Nzuza’s reclining figure is declarative in both poise and title, joining a lineage of Black painters who continue to intervene in and disturb typical dynamics of the gaze, while also pulling compositional cues from contemporary fashion photography. The sitter’s features render her indistinguishable from the artist’s painted society of one: she is the archetype, the masked self-portrait, the peacock. Her body is weighted, defined, alive – too composed to bear the task of returning “the” gaze; too cool. Her eyes are not averted, nor do they stare back. Her attention is simply elsewhere. Thus, while Nzuza’s reckoning with paint as medium sustains regular dialogue with western art history and its burdensome socio-cultural dimensions, the work is firmly situated in the present, embodying the nonchalant hyper-awareness of Gen Z.

This attitude consistently marks the figures in Ballad of the Peacock. They are deeply comfortable, unaffected, and easy in their affection for one another. They are content to be looked at, yet are conscious enough to dodge objectification, with reason to be present other than the viewers’ regard. Whether in lush Nongoma; set against stark, less particular backdrops; or posed in stylish interiors, Mmangaliso Nzuza’s repeated, well-defined, and self-fashioned character is always at home, simultaneously offering itself for – and masking itself from – the gaze.

Text by Thulile Gamedze