Alternative Kidz

Nxumalo's exhibition documents urban black youth who choose to identify with alternative culture. In so doing, Nxumalo re-presents and repositions not only mainstream South African youth culture, but also the ability of alternative counter-culture to react against social stereotyping. In this context, alternative culture is both culturally dissonant and individually liberating. It demonstrates how counter-culture can function as a mode of complex self-fashioning.

First popularized in predominately western capitalist societies in the 1970s and 1980s, punk culture was characterized by a rejection of commercialism and political idealism. Today, however, alternative culture has largely been absorbed into mainstream society; it is no longer largely associated with anarchism, radical politics, and a rejection of social values and norms. This work also raises questions over the nature of (intentioned) cultural divergence, and the status of contemporary subjectivities, particularly in relation to the emergence of new urban cultures and dynamics.

Nxumalo produced this body of work as the recipient of the 2008 Edward Ruiz Mentorship at the Market Photo Workshop, in consultation with his mentors John Fleetwood, Lester Adams and Michelle Loukidis. Photographer Nontsikelelo Veleko also assisted in the development of the exhibition

Print Editions

Small size: A1 (594 x 841mm)


Edition of 10
Large size: A0 (841 x 1189mm)


Edition of 5