Lunga Ntila (South-Africa 1995-20222) was a an art photographer whose work was marked by storytelling, identity and deconstruction. As a conceptual photographer she made use of a practice that brings together self-portraiture and collage making. She used her practice as a way of understanding ideologies that govern the different facets that exist within us, and us around her. The foundation of Lunga’s practice was dissecting information and subjects to show the multiplicity that exists in each and one of them. She gave the viewer access to a world/self – reimagined. Lunga was known for creating works that are a melting pot of all the images, sounds and feelings that she has come across that she used as reference points in her work. 

In the art series Clarity In The Abyss, the artworks take advantage of the blackness as being a site for magic and the call to be present. The figures are caught in a moment of transition, the motion that surrounds the gure turns them into a personification of a memory. The black becomes a space where you can’t tell worlds apart, it has become a place where you can birth new realities alongside revisiting the past ones.

The artist Lunga Ntila has passed away at the age of 27, only moments before Uitstalling Villa opened her exhibition. We stand, with love and courage, with the Ntila family, friends, colleagues, and everyone who was touched by Lunga’s light.