King Kong

Title: King Kong
Medium: Six colour lithograph
Size: 52.2 x 40.2 cm
Edition size: 22

A suite of prints based on Drum, the famous magazine that started in 1951 and which captured the zeitgeist of the 1950s and 1960s. Drum was instrumental in pioneering investigative journalism in apartheid South Africa as well as celebrating life in Black communities. Underlying the images is the narrative of identity and citizenship articulated through dynamic ideas on belonging, equality and universality. The editions consist of 22 prints each, 2016 being the 22nd year of democracy in South Africa. With these prints, Nhlengethwa hopes to educate and remind the youth of where they come from.

King Kong was a landmark South African jazz-influenced musical, billed at the time as an "all African jazz opera". It opened in Johannesburg in 1959 and was an immediate success and it "swept South Africa like a storm", touring the country for two years and playing to record-breaking multi-racial audiences, before being booked for a London production in 1961, by which time it had been seen by some 200,000 South Africans.

Sam Nhlengethwa Print Archive