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Raphael Kreations

@raphael_kreations

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Ancestral images. 🙏🏿
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UKUWA NOKUVUKA: The Beauty of Falling.

This body of work is about what it means to return to yourself. To go all the way down underneath the waters, drowning but breathing, falling and still be standing.

Ukuwa nokuvuka to fall and to rise. life does not move in a straight line. It moves like water. Sometimes you are above, sometimes you are below. Sometimes the void opens right above your head and looks straight at you. You breathe anyway.

The beauty is not in avoiding the deep. The beauty is in keeping your beauty inside it.

And you are not alone in that falling.
We fall, we rise. We are guided. We are held, even when we feel most underwater.

This is not about drowning. This is about remembering who are.

Muse || @umcijo

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SANIBONANI.

For months I have been sitting with clay, with smoke, with fire asking what it means to make art that is used, not just looked at.

ABAPHANSI was born from that.

Guardians of Light. For smoke, for light, for quiet return.

The first chapter — THE RITUAL MANUAL — is here. A lookbook of what has been made, and a whisper of what is coming.

This is only the beginning.

Light. Breathe. Return.

Set Design || Lighting || Photography || Isandla semfene.

#langelihlemawela #art #functionalart #africanart

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THE BODY AS ARCHIVE.

#langelihlemawela #art #artist #reels

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The Boy Child Is Not Left Behind, He Is Left Blind.

children are raised differently and we pretend we don’t see the damage.

From birth, the girl child is groomed. She is taught to nurture. To be a mother before she is a woman, a wife before she is a person. She is taught to hold, to soften, to carry the home on her back, to forgive, to nurture even those who hurt her.

The boy child is taught to be free. To be whatever he wants to be — except soft. Except gentle. Except vulnerable. We tell him, “Indoda ayikhali.” A man does not cry. We teach him that to be a man is to be hard, to dominate, to not feel. We give him the world, but we take away his humanity.

So no, the boy child is not left behind by society. Society has centered him. What we left behind is his heart.

This body of work looks at the boy child.

The bandage is the patriarchy.

It is what we wrap around our boys from childhood. We bandage their eyes so they cannot see tenderness as strength. We bandage their mouths so they cannot ask for help. We bandage their hands that were meant to hold, and we teach those hands only to hit, to take, to hurt. Because to be soft is not manly. To love openly is not manly. To nurture is for girls.

A boy taught that love is weakness will grow into a man who uses pain to prove power. And that is why our society is bleeding.

This work is a prayer to unbandage him.

We must teach our sons to nurture, not just to provide. To love, not just to possess. To protect, not just to dominate. To understand that a real man knows how to hold a child, how to apologize, how to cry, how to be gentle without fearing that his manhood will fall off.

If we want to deal with the patriarchy & violence in our homes, in our streets, in our country we must start in the house, with how we raise the boy child. We must give him back his softness. We must allow him to be human.

Protect the women, always.

Umkhuleko we Nzala Bantu. 🙏🏿🕯️

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The water needs the moon to stay put.

Without her pull, it would forget where to go. The tree does not rush.
It does not grow today because it wants to be big tomorrow. It just grows.
The water does not stop.
It does not say “I am tired today.” It flows. Everyday. For us.
Nature is nature. It does not hurry. Yet it never fails to show up for humanity.
But we. We rush. We built a world that tells us to be fast, to be more, to be now.
And in rushing, we challenge nature.
We destroy nature.
And in destroying nature, we destroy ourselves.
She is still there under the water, moon for a head, holding the tide steady even when no one is watching.
come back into rhythm.
A call to understand and trust the process.
To trust the universe.

It has never rushed, yet it has never been late.

© Langelihle Mawela

#langelihlemawela #art #digitalart #bodyart

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UNDERNEATH THE WATERS

We need to cleanse.
Ourselves. Our land. Our memory.

These are the ancestors of Alkebulan.
They went beneath the waters when their land was taken above.

Now the non-natives walk on top and teach the natives how to live in their own land — without their true selves. Without their wealth, which is the land.

To heal, we must have the uncomfortable conversation:
Who are we when we are not who they taught us to be?

We must remember.

Beneath the waters, they are still praying in white.
Waiting for us to come down and wash.

Inhlambuluko.

#langelihlemawela #art #digitalart

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Digital arts meets theatre performance.

For years I’ve wanted to merge all my mediums in one space, film, paint & digital art. For JOMBA dance Theatre Festival, I finally did.

I created digital visuals for my brother @imhotep perfomance at jomba. a time-travelling piece that moves through time and space to capture different generations of Abantu, the aboriginals.

Using Afrofuturism and digital art as a language, it’s me travelling through space and bringing that journey back into theatre as part of the storytelling.

This is theatre as archive. As future. As memory.

Digital visuals by isandla semfene. 🦍

PS || this video is actually much longer, and much slower. You had to be there to experience it.

#langelihlemawela #art #digitalart #photoshop #artist

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To return to yourself, you must stop performing.
Stop rushing to be understood.
Stop wearing what was never yours.
sit, breathe, wait.
And in that waiting, remember you were never lost.
You were just moving too fast to be found.

Muse || @umcijo_xaba

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Creating a a sacred set for a perfomance.

It genuinely feels good to be creating for theatre, theatre was my 2nd love. (After film, my first love.) basically I’m just a storyteller who shares her voice in different mediums.

#langelihlemawela #art #artist #setdesign #theatre

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The queer body refuses to pick a side.

It wears masculine and feminine like twin crowns.
No choosing. No opposite. No shrinking.
Just the whole self, in full spectrum, standing against the sky.

This piece celebrates a body that refuses binaries.
It holds masculine vigor and feminine grace in one breath.
The sharp lines of the painted patterns.
The soft curves.
The strength to stand in the wind, and the softness to be adorned by hand.

It is not becoming anything.
It is not opposing anything.
It is embracing everything it already is.

Unapologetic.

Muse || Lihle Mthanti

#langelihlemawela #art #queer #wlw #lgbtq

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THE NGUNI TIME TRAVELER PART II.

#langelihlemawela #art #contemporarydance

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When i was in Grade 4, a friend of mine drowned and died in a school pool. a few years later, I also drowned and almost died. I was giving up when they pulled me out of the water.
Since then, water has been fear.

But through my work, I keep putting humans in the water.
Under the ocean. Painted. Praying. Breathing.

Because the water taught me something:
Fear is part of life. But it doesn’t get to dictate how I live.

The ocean is a bridge.
Between life and death.
And I have always survived in the space between the two.

The ocean always tries to take me home, this language. Is how I communicate. My deepest thoughts and fears. My past traumas turned into works of art and something people admire. I learn to conquer my fears emotionally and mentally through my work.

However,physically. I still fear to go near the water. I still don’t know how to relax and trust that i can. The idea that this is still something that i fail to do. Time and time again but in a different realm. We travel and have seen different kingdoms that remind me of my true path. But first, theres a bridge we need to cross.

#langelihlemawela #art #artist #surrealart

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