“I seek to create a platform for healing, reflection, and dialogue. My art serves as a powerful tool for education, activism, and community empowerment.” - Frans Thoka
Raised in Northern Limpopo, by his parents in the township of Marapong and his maternal grandmother in the rural village of Ga-Maja, Thoka understands both the tension of a congested disenfranchised community and the solemn solace of wide-open spaces. He speaks with great relish of the illicit pleasure of ‘crossing fences and traveling through the bush’, of his passion for Indigenous plant life – cacti, aloe, acacia – of ancient burials beneath enduring tress, hidden rituals, secret pacts – his childhood that has endured and shaped the nature of his art fundamentally.
Acknowledging land as a source of pain and hope, Thoka’s art is not a morbid retention of suffering. Rather it advances through the embrace of pain, towards reconciliation. He reminds us that change is never simple, that Black life, remains to be invigorated, transfigured, rendered inspirational. As to how Thoka practices this advocacy? He does so quietly, softly, through tones of grey, layered textures of black oil paint, stitched and glued collage, the effect of which is silhouetted and intrinsically flat. If the depth of field is secondary in Thoka’s collaged blanket works – while primary in his drawings on Fabriano and hand-made paper – it is because the artist’s approach is fundamentally abstract – Thoka elicits emotion.
Thoka’s says that his artworks, although they reflect the irreconcilable land dispossession of Black people in South Africa, also provides a space for cross-cultural healing and advocates for reconciliation.