This year Thembalethu Manqunyana has exhibited across three continents and created an over whelming response by both local and international clients. His charm not only stems from his tangible playful depiction of personas a trend seen in contemporary art but by his superb translation of previous masters. This achievement is always completed with the lightness of suggestion and always with in his own artistic parameters never touching on previously passed foot prints.

Thembalethu’s audiences and collectors greatest fascination is born from both this delicate balance of his own narrative and that of others universally and the balance between European art theory and African art depictions. There always is a parallel strand of thought which at times is so strong banishes the singularity to created unity.

Ethnic Assemblage is Thembalethu Manqunyana first exhibition with AITY Gallery in which he seeks to explore and acknowledge an artistic and a personal growth in public platforms infiltrated by unacknowledged audiences; voyeurs outside of ethnic idioms. The personal part of this exhibit is marked by a distinct background of IsiXhosa culture on the apparent patriarchal doppelgänger; between identities that purport to signify margins of being a boy and man. Or being an art student in Gqeberha who continues to develop a expression in Cape Town without a fixed voice from a particular mentor this being saved for the streets, observations and random dialogs.