Spotlight on Dion Cupido

Dion Cupido is considered by many to be one of South Africa’s most important black portrait artists of his generation.

He grew up in the notorious Mitchells Plain suburb of Cape Town where street art was his first introduction to art. As a teenager and young adult he attended community art projects and developed a visual language with a strong reference to hip hop culture and the realty of living in a place where gangsterism and other social challenges are part of daily life.

He discovered his ability to paint in 1990 while helping a friend with a school project. His first paintings were exhibited in 1998. In 2003 he joined the Arts & Media Access Centre's (AMAC) professional development program, where he won the Truworths AMAC Academy of the Visual Arts award.

Writer and art historian Ashraf Jamal recently observed that Cupido “represents the very newly minted post-transitional moment in SA art; a moment in which our dark history and its democratic afterglow are both beside the point.”

Dion Cupido’s solo exhibition titled State of reality can be viewed at the WORLDART gallery in Cape Town
and concludes on 30 May 2023.