Navel

"There is a haunting tenderness in the work of Navel Seakamela - a tension between visibility and erasure, selfhood and societal projection. His figures, often rendered in shadowy silhouettes with bold red mouths, float in an undefined space, stripped of gendered cues, individual markers, or place. And yet, paradoxically, they speak volumes.

These portraits are not likenesses; they are meditations. They hold the weight of shared identity, shaped not by who we are alone, but by how we are seen, read, consumed. In the dark tonality of skin and the striking, vulnerable expressiveness of the mouth, Seakamela explores the psychic burden of being - of inhabiting bodies that are politicized, desired, overlooked, and defined by systems larger than themselves.

His brush reveals the fractures beneath the surface: the ache of isolation, the grip of consumer culture, and the constraints of gendered expectation. Through large-scale compositions and intimate framing, Seakamela creates visual spaces where silence becomes voice, and ambiguity becomes power.

His work is not a mirror, but a question. A delicate confrontation. A call to look not at, but into - and perhaps, to see differently."

MEET

Navel

Navel Seakamela was born in 1991 in the township of Soshanguve, Tshwane, and raised in the vibrant yet complex social landscape of Tembisa, just beyond Johannesburg. It was there, amidst the rhythm of daily life, that his first artistic instincts were nurtured - beginning at the Tembisa Art Centre, and eventually leading him to complete a diploma in Visual Arts at Tshwane University of Technology in 2015.

Seakamela’s journey is marked by a quiet but unwavering devotion to the figure - not in its literal representation, but in its psychological resonance. A finalist in the PPC Imaginarium Art Competition and Thami Mnyele Fine Art Awards, and an apprentice under sculptor Angus Taylor, he has gone on to exhibit widely across South Africa and internationally - from the FNB Art Joburg and Investec Cape Town Art Fair to solo exhibitions in Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Paris.

In 2022, he became the inaugural artist-in-residence at GUILD, where he developed the poignant and critically acclaimed series Who We Should Not Be.

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