18th Mar, 2026 19:00
Modern & Contemporary Art
80
Philiswa Lila (South Africa 1988-)
Onobuhle – Beauty Contest
oil on duck cotton
Artwork date: 2022
Signature details: signed and dated mid-right
Exhibited: Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, Cape Town International Convention Centre, Melrose Gallery, 18 to 20 February 2022.
Exchange Rates*: USD 5 671 - 7 561
GBP 4 802 - 6 403
EURO 4 189 - 5 586
oil on duck cotton
Artwork date: 2022
Signature details: signed and dated mid-right
Exhibited: Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town, Cape Town International Convention Centre, Melrose Gallery, 18 to 20 February 2022.
Exchange Rates*: USD 5 671 - 7 561
GBP 4 802 - 6 403
EURO 4 189 - 5 586
(1)
170 x 170 cm unstretched
Provenance:
Private collection, Cape Town.
Melrose Gallery, Johannesburg.
ABOUT THE ARTWORK
Born in Mthatha, Eastern Cape, Philiswa Lila is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice centres on memory, identity, and the narratives embedded within everyday objects. Working across painting, beading, and installation, she treats materials as vessels for memory or carriers of lived experience.
Onobuhle: Beauty Contest forms part of Lila’s sustained engagement with the family photo album as both object and archive. After rediscovering an empty, worn album in her childhood home, she began to consider it not simply as a book of images, but as a performative space where storytelling and recollection unfold. Memory, in her work, is active and revisited; something that can be negotiated rather than fixed.
The title of this work recalls a childhood neighbour, Nogolide, who once encouraged Lila to enter a beauty contest. Misreading the invitation as mockery, the young artist declined. In returning to this moment, Lila reflects on colourism, having grown up dark-skinned, girlhood vulnerability, and the shaping force of names. The work navigates the tension between how one is seen and how one sees oneself, drawing attention to the emotional imprints carried from childhood into adulthood.
Lila’s broader practice frequently incorporates beadwork and tactile surfaces; mediums deeply connected to isiXhosa cultural traditions and bodily adornment. These material choices reinforce her interest in the body as archive, as well as a site where personal histories, language, and inherited meanings are inscribed.
Winner of the 2018 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, Lila completed a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2019. Her work has since been exhibited widely, including the solo exhibition Skin, Bone, Fire: The First Album at Absa Gallery in 2020. Across her practice, intimate recollections become a means of examining agency and the ways personal histories intersect with broader cultural narratives.
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 18th Mar, 2026
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