Ptika Ntuli is a South African who spent time in exile in the UK during apartheid, and contributed to dozens of A&S shows.
His lifetime of work as a poet, sculptor and philosopher was honoured by the Arts and Culture Trust and Vodacom Foundation with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Art. On receiving the award Ntuli explained, “Art is language that allows me to express disagreeable ideas agreeably. My life in art has been a ceaseless struggle to find a language that will capture the nuances of my times, and give concrete expression to the dreams that come by day and night. Sculpture is a bullfight that batters and bruises, and stretches the limits of endurance; but in the end you remain with a renewed aesthetic vision and a body pulsating with a spirit found from the relentless search for an ultimate shape or form, that would speak and answer the yet unasked questions.”
“I love you with the power of undulating
Curves of bones
With the marrow of memory
Of our first kiss
Under a bridge too far”
