Akshar Maganbeharie

Lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa

Artist statement

Akshar Maganbeharie (b. 1995, South Africa) is an artist working across painting, drawing, and mark making. His practice explores the influence of digital media, consumer aesthetics, and pop cultural imagery on contemporary visual perception. Working primarily through gestural abstraction, he filters fragments of the everyday, advertising, internet ephemera, music, literature, and personal memory into layered, expressive compositions. His works often embody a tension between immediacy and accumulation, engaging with the sensory overload of mediated life while maintaining a sense of play and formal experimentation. Using mark-making, colour, and intuitive layering as core strategies, he is interested in how painting and drawing can absorb and reframe the visual language of mass culture. In addition to his solo practice, Maganbeharie is a founding member of the Kutti Collective, a collaborative collective of South African artists interested in dialogue, curatorial experimentation, and shared practices. He completed his BA in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 2017. His work has been exhibited at Everard Read, A4 Arts Foundation, 99 Loop, Church Projects in Cape Town and the Wits Art Museum, as well as at Latitudes Art Fair, Johannesburg, and international online platforms. He was named one of Design Indaba’s Emerging Creatives in 2022 supported by the South African Department of Sports, Arts and Culture.

Artwork