“I Am Not Governed By My Flesh” Now Open at Affinity Gallery
Affinity Gallery proudly announces the opening of “I Am Not Governed By My Flesh,” a solo exhibition by South African artist Lulama Wolf, curated by Anelisa Mangcu. This exhibition not only celebrates the artist’s work but also marks the gallery’s 5th anniversary and coincides with Art X Lagos week.
In this body of work, the boundaries between the spiritual and the material dissolve, revealing them as two dialects of a singular language. Wolf’s art speaks through striking imagery, including women adorned with horns and the contemplative gaze of a cow resting nearby. The essence of this exhibition is captured through the quiet yet powerful application of pigment on rough, earthen canvases, allowing the artist to explore the threshold between heaven and earth. Here, the divine becomes tangible, expressed through flesh, ritual, and ancestral memory.
Lulama Wolf, Where we meet, 2025, Acrylic and sand on canvas
Inspired by the passage from Matthew 6:10, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” Wolf’s work reflects on the fluid connection between spiritual aspiration and earthly existence. Instead of portraying heaven as a distant paradise, the artist presents it as a vital principle, a vibration that resonates within the soil, the body, and the blood. This fluidity enables the work to delve into the deeper significance of sacred embodiment within the female form, alongside the ancestral continuum that sustains it.
Lulama Wolf, The weight of my dear friend stillness, 2025, Acrylic and sand on canvas, 100 x 100 cm, 39.4 x 39.4 in
The figures depicted are both delicate and powerful, embodying the duality of fragility and endurance—the paradox of being both vessel and source. Rather than mere representations, these subjects are embodiments that carry the rich textures of myth and memory.
“I Am Not Governed By My Flesh” will be on display until January 17, 2026. Be sure to visit the exhibition with a friend to fully appreciate this profound exploration of art and spirituality.
About the Artist
Lulama “Wolf” Mlambo (b.1993) is a Johannesburg-based visual artist whose work expresses spirituality, African identity, and abstraction through a deeply intuitive and textural practice. Drawing on vernacular architecture, pre-colonial knowledge systems, and personal mythology, her paintings are rich in earth tones and sculptural surfaces that evoke ritual, memory, and Rest.
“My work carries my spirit before it conveys any explicit message. Intuition guides my process, which I later refine through considered prioritisation. Each piece reflects multiple facets of my identity – abstraction, curiosity, mythology, spirituality, and introspection. Blackness is inherently present in my work, not as a thematic choice, but as an inescapable fact of authorship; it exists because I, a Black woman, created it. This presence becomes even more significant in a context where archival erasure and the fragility of cultural transmission remain persistent concerns within Black communities. My work expresses a yearning for clarity, often through abstraction, yet always grounded in a Black sensibility. Through nuanced textures and earthy materials, my practice navigates the space between ambiguity and inquiry, allowing form and surface to embody quiet complexity.”
Her exhibition history includes solo shows in London (SoShiro Gallery, 2022), Athens (The Breeder Gallery, 2022), and her first South African solo, Ayakha: Indlela Yokuxola (THK Gallery, Cape Town 2023). That same year, she staged a landmark duo exhibition with the estate of Sonia Ferlov-Mancoba at Eighteen Gallery in Copenhagen.
Wolf has participated in major group exhibitions and art fairs globally, including 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair (Paris, London, New York), Art Basel (Basel), ART X Lagos, FNB Art Joburg, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, RMB Latitudes, AKAA Paris, and Southern Guild Los Angeles. She was also a finalist for the Emergence Art Prize (2020).
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