Seeking: N’lamwai Luntha Chithambo at the KZNSA Gallery by Ladia Kasimu 

N’lamwai Luntha Chithambo’s first solo exhibition, Seeking, introduces a painter whose practice interrogates identity, memory, and faith. Born in Scotland in 1997 to Malawian parents and raised in South Africa, Chithambo navigates layered heritages and shifting notions of home. Having completed his Masters in Fine Arts at Rhodes University in 2023, Chithambo was one of two artists selected for the KZNSA Gallery’s Young Artists’ Project (YAP), a platform for experimental voices that was established in 2002. Seeking reveals a visual language shaped by allegory, autobiography, and the search for belonging.

The exhibition presents eleven works, where recurring motifs such as hands, wings, clouds and star-strewn skies form a symbolic lexicon that feels both personal and expansive. Each canvas functions not as a definitive statement but as an invitation to contemplate the exhibition theme by encouraging reflection on who we are, where we belong, and how faith, experience, and identity shape that journey.

In Negative Thoughts, a faceless central figure, rendered in concrete-like rigidity, conveys isolation and inner tension beneath looming shadows and brooding clouds. Behind him, a man and woman with visible faces, positioned near a church, offer warmth and human connection, evoking community and faith. Together, these elements highlight the delicate yet essential human need for belonging.

Faith permeates Chithambo’s exploration. Through biblical references and sacred imagery, he creates symbolic spaces where the divine meets the human desire to anchor oneself in something beyond the self. In Gathering, a central figure stands beneath a vast, star-filled sky, while internal figures engage in prayer or gaze toward shafts of sunlight breaking through clouds, evoking introspection, spirituality, and hope. In Monarch, luminous butterflies transform metamorphosis into a vivid metaphor for resilience and change. Metamorphosis, both physical and symbolic, reflects the ongoing processes of personal and collective growth that appear throughout Chithambo’s work. By evoking transformation, he suggests that identity, belonging, and spiritual understanding are never fixed but continually evolving, much like the figures, light, and shadows that recur across his paintings.

Identity emerges vividly as a theme in Rivers of Vitiligo, where skin becomes a flowing landscape, turning difference into beauty and positioning the self within a larger, interconnected cosmos. Similarly, Home in the Enclave depicts open hands cradling a family against a burning cityscape, balancing protection with instability and reflecting the complexities of migration and the quest for rootedness in ever-shifting urban landscape.

Curated by Rachel Baasch, Rohini Amratlal, and Thobekile Shange, Seeking is installed with deliberate rhythm and spaciousness, inviting close attention. Its progression, from cosmic allegories to intimate figurations, mirrors the journey implied in its title.

The exhibition’s strength lies in its embrace of pressure. Chithambo offers no easy answers; faith and community can anchor yet unsettle, vulnerability coexists with resilience, and the act of seeking is simultaneously personal and collective. Through motifs such as clouds, shadows, star-filled skies, butterflies, and figures within figures, he examines the evolving, fragile nature of identity, belonging, and spiritual reflection.

Seeking demonstrates how art can illuminate the intricacies of human experience, bridging personal contemplation and communal inquiry while navigating the subtle strain between identity, belonging, faith, and purpose.

Ladia Kasimu is a poet, writer, and art enthusiast whose goal is to create community through the arts. She participated as a writer in the KZNA’s Young Artists Project.

Exhibition Review – N’lamwai Luntha Chithambo, Seeking by Thobekile Kweyama 

The Rand Mutual Assurance Young Artists Project (YAP) continues to provide a vital platform for emerging voices in South African contemporary art. The 2025 edition features Seeking, a body of work by N’lamwai Luntha Chithambo, an artist whose practice is rooted in spirituality, migration, and the complexities of identity formation. Through painting and mixed media, Chithambo creates a poetic visual language that transforms personal and collective histories into allegories of longing, resilience, and transcendence.

Born in Edinburgh Scotland to Malawian parents and raised in South Africa, Chithambo’s biography already embodies displacement and hybridity. His work does not narrate this directly but rather translates it into a symbolic exploration of what it means to be in search – of belonging, of healing, of meaning. The very title Seeking captures this condition of perpetual movement, neither fixed nor resolved but always in motion.

The exhibition features a series of figurative compositions that oscillate between vulnerability and resilience. In works such as Monarch, figures sprout butterfly wings, suspended in liminal space, fragile yet insistent in their striving. Elsewhere, pieces like Negative Thoughts give psychological turbulence through fractured gestures and overlapping silhouettes. The figures are not portraits of individuals but archetypes, carrying within them the weight of migration, the shadows of trauma, and the persistence of spiritual yearning.

Chithambo’s painterly language is deeply atmospheric. His use of layered glazes, shifting tones, and luminous highlights creates an otherworldly quality, as though the figures appear and dissolve at once. This ethereality reinforces the central theme of seeking – forms are not stable, but searching, becoming. The canvases often suggest upward movement, gesturing toward transcendence without ever fully arriving at it.

Symbolism is central to his practice. Hands raised in prayer, wings unfurling, and clouds dispersing across canvases all evoke a language of spirituality that feels simultaneously personal and universal. These motifs, while grounded in the artist’s own search for belonging, resonate more broadly with viewers who recognise in them the collective desire for refuge and meaning. Migration here is not only geographic but emotional and spiritual: the works insist that the act of seeking is itself a form of survival.

What stands out in Seeking is the balance between tenderness and unease. While the paintings glow with hope, they also acknowledge rupture and displacement. The figures suggest that identity itself is unstable under the weight of history. Yet, within this instability lies resilience – the persistence of searching, of reaching for light despite shadow.

The curatorial layout amplifies this atmosphere of contemplation. Works are given space to breathe, encouraging audiences to slow down, linger, and engage meditatively with the imagery. The quiet rhythm of the exhibition mirrors the rhythm of prayer, positioning the gallery itself as a space of reflection. This curatorial sensitivity ensures that the emotional and spiritual dimensions of the work are not overwhelmed but allowed to resonate.

Chithambo’s Seeking does not offer resolution. It refuses neat narratives of healing or closure, instead dwelling in searching itself. This refusal is powerful: it acknowledges that for many shaped by histories of displacement, survival lies not in answers but in the ongoing act of seeking.
The RMA Young Artists Project by the KZNSA Gallery, in spotlighting Chithambo’s practice, affirms the necessity of nurturing young artists who grapple with the complexities of contemporary South African life. His work speaks with quiet urgency, asking viewers to consider their own journeys of belonging and transcendence. Seeking is both deeply personal and profoundly universal – an exhibition that lingers long after leaving the gallery, inviting us all to reflect on what we, too, are seeking.

Thobekile Kweyama is a writer and emerging creative with a passion for South African art, heritage, and storytelling. She participated as a writer in the 2025 RMA KZNSA Young Artists’ Project.