Colorful collage portrait inspired by Soweto, showcasing vibrant patterns and textures on canvas.
Vibrant Shweshwe fabric collage artwork by Soweto artist, featuring a colorful portrait with traditional mask.
Colorful abstract portrait collage inspired by Soweto, featuring vibrant patterns and textures, showcasing local heritage.
Colorful collage portrait inspired by Soweto, showcasing vibrant patterns and textures on canvas.
Vibrant Shweshwe fabric collage artwork by Soweto artist, featuring a colorful portrait with traditional mask.
Colorful abstract portrait collage inspired by Soweto, featuring vibrant patterns and textures, showcasing local heritage.
Tsholo Motong

Uncertainty

Save $-4,000.00
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My work is only inspired by local scenes from Soweto, South Africa, which has a rich history of migrant labour. I use a lot of colour because I believe colour is like a spice of life.

 

Read more about Tsholo
Technique Dimensions
Shweshwe fabric collage and acrylic on canvas 63'' H, 47’’ W
Framing From
Gallery Wrap Soweto, South Africa


Uncertainty turning into constant reality,
artery piercing to thick lobes of lymph nodes,
sickness from insanity
psyche sensitivities of split personalities 

By Splash Motong
  • Domestic: FREE shipping
  • International: calculated at checkout
  • Ships from: San Francisco, CA
  • Ships within: 1-3 days if in stock, 10-14 days if made to order
  • Delivery time: 5-7 days domestic, 10-14 days international
  • Duties & import taxes: paid by the customer on delivery
  • Returns: 30 days on originals and original prints; made-to-order prints are final

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Tsholo "Splash" Motong trained as a fashion designer and worked for several Johannesburg labels. When cheap imports saturated the industry he moved into art, which asked for the same hands — cutting, patterning, assembling — and he has been building faces out of cloth ever since.

He collects fabric from across the continent: Shweshwe from Da Gama Textiles in South Africa, Ankara from Nkosikazi Fabrics, Vlisco and GTP wax prints from West Africa, Kalanga from Zimbabwe, Malian bògòlanfini. Each length is cut into hundreds of small irregular pieces and laid onto canvas like a mosaic, then layered with acrylic and paper. Patterns that were never meant to sit together, coaxed into a single face.

He learned it from women. His grandmother knitted blankets and jerseys and crocheted; his mother was a seamstress, sewing curtains and bedding with hand embroidery. "She was my pillar," he says of his grandmother. "She didn't scold me when I told her I wanted to venture into this career."

He writes one of these poems for every work — English, isiZulu, Afrikaans, tsotsitaal, published under his own name.

His work was the lead photograph of National Geographic Traveller's March 2024 feature on Johannesburg's artists, and a 2023 collage is on the cover of a Peter Lang study of African women's writing. Each piece is selected personally from his Soweto studio.

Read Motong's full story — Ubuntu, Soweto, and the fabrics he works in.

Interview with Tsholo

We sat down with Tsholo in October 2023 before his second solo exhibit at Art House SF.

Read the interview

"Faces of Soweto"

Tsholo returns to Art House SF with his second solo exhibit in August 2023. Titled "Faces of Soweto" in this exhibit, Tsholo Motong presents the people around him, people of Soweto.

He tells their stories with insightful clarity and compassion.

See the exhibit

"Proud and Beautiful"

Tsholo's first solo exhibit at Art House SF in August 2022. For the first time we're introduced to the amazing world of Shweshwe fabric and his fabric collages.

see the exhibit

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