Sandile Radebe is a Johannesburg-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, and public art.
With over two decades of experience, he has realised permanent, temporary, and site-responsive projects across South Africa and internationally, working across civic, institutional, gallery, and community contexts.
His work has been commissioned by public and private institutions and is represented in collections including the University of Cape Town’s Ibali Art Collection, Rand Merchant Bank, and Art Bank of South Africa.
Photo: Solomon Moremong
recent work
Mnandi Madzeni
Mnandi Madzeni, 2026. Spray painted mild steel. 7 200 x 1 740 x 800 mm. 850 kg’s in weight (estimate). Hyde Park.
Commissioned through Guns and Rain Gallery
Mnandi Madzeni is a site-specific sculptural work commissioned for a private residence in Hyde Park, Johannesburg. Composed of spray-painted metal sheets assembled in the form of the Isibheqe Sonhlamvu syllabary, the work draws from Bab’ Credo Mutwa’s izimpawu zesintu. Rooted in isiZulu petroglyphs as a framework for indigeneity—as methodology, epistemic lens, and speculative device—the work explores how meaning is formed, negotiated, and continually reshaped. By withholding fixed inscription, the sculpture invites speculation, foregrounding compositional poetics and aesthetic decision-making as drivers of meaning. Its open-ended structure positions the viewer as an active participant in interpretation. The title, Mnandi Madzeni, emerged from a conversation between artist and client about the pleasurable affect of colour. A colloquial expression loosely meaning “I’m good” or “nice sweets,” it reflects meaning arising through lived experience and dialogue.
Mcijo qondile
Mcijo Qondile II, 2026. Painted mild steel. 2100 × 1000 × 1000 mm. Hyde Park.
Commissioned through Guns and Rain Gallery
Mcijo Qondile II continues my exploration of isiZulu practices as a methodology for contemporary art-making. The sculpture is structured around umcijo—a triangular motif found on isiZulu beer vessels—which functions as an iconographic system that signifies regional stylistic distinctions, articulates an artist’s visual lexicon, asserts authorship, and encodes layered meanings.
Amabheqe emihla ngemihla
Amabheqe emihla ngemihla is a contemplative installation that brings amasumpa motifs from isiZulu material culture into dialogue with textual excerpts from the Daily Sun and Daily Voice. Traditionally, amasumpa function as carriers of knowledge; here, their symbolic language intersects with contemporary forms of information dissemination to pluralise understandings of knowledge. The work reimagines the amasumpa as both a cultural symbol and an evolving art object, reflecting on its past, present, and speculative futures. Newspaper strips featuring headlines, prices, and portraits lend everyday relevance to the motifs, while their spatial arrangement across walls and floor extends meaning beyond text. The installation invites viewers to read, interpret, and generate new associations between Indigenous and contemporary knowledge systems and lived experience.