Puleng Mongale, a South African artist whose compelling digital collages trace a personal journey of survival, memory and self-definition. Her recent series of works—inviting past and present selves into one visual dialogue—emerges as a richly layered meditation in image form: “This ongoing body of work brings together past and present self-portraits. Through these digital collages, I merge two states of being, allowing them to meet and exist in conversation with each other.… I spend time ‘re-remembering myself’ through my archive while honouring who I am in this present moment.”
Roots, Emergence and Artistic Vocabulary
Born 1991 in Soweto and based in South Africa, Mongale first ventured into photography and styling before discovering collage-making as a means to give form to the complexities she carried. A former copy-writer trainee who veered into art, she describes herself as self-taught: “I didn’t have other voices competing with my own, so I was able to create from my imagination and really just do what I want/like.”
Her medium of choice—digital collage, built on self-portraiture—offers her both agency and flexibility. “Collages would allow me to mix the old with the new. They would allow me to reinvent images and give them new contexts.” she reflects. The layering of time, identity, memory and body is central to her visual language.
The Series: Past and Present, Survival and Healing
In the series you’ve described, Mongale invites us into a liminal space where the “self that was” and the “self that is” converse. She writes: “These collages remind me how far I’ve come in my journey of survival and healing. I am changed and imperfect, yet my agency remains central.” This is a reckoning—less about performance of trauma and more about reclamation. She adds: “Although set against the backdrop of having lived through trauma, this work is not concerned with the performance of pain. It is about the practice of allowing myself to exist. Some collages are awkward, others make me feel powerful and in my element. Some are soft and tender. I am all of these things, and this work helps me honour that truth.”
To “recover” for Mongale becomes not a return to “normal”, but a newly-forged definition: “The process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost.” Her artworks become tools of retrieval—reaching into archives, into memory, into fragments of identity and weaving them into the present self.
Visual Elements & Symbolism
There are several visual motifs that frequently appear in her work:
Self-portraiture as site of inquiry: Mongale often places herself in the frame—not as passive model, but as agent of her own story. “Self-portraiture felt more ‘natural’ to me… So I started experimenting with photography. Then I found collage.” Visi+1
Archive and layering: The notion of digging into past photographs, memories, traditions—women who raised her, women she never met—appear as ghosts, collaborators or antecedents. As one directory notes: “My digital collage work is an exploration of my identity and spirituality through an internal dialogue … I constantly feel like I am existing in more than one temporality, the physical and the intangible.” artlink
Cultural sign-posts: Mongale often references Basotho attire, township roots, working-class women’s labour and the paradoxes of upward mobility. In a 2020 interview she noted: “In 2016, When The Madams Are Away, The Help Will Slay” addressed blackness and labour in townships. Visi
Aesthetic of imperfection: Rejecting polished technical mastery, Mongale embraces the “wrong way” of being self-taught: “Doing the kind of work that I do made me abandon the idea of perfection immediately.” The Mail & Guardian
Spiritual dimension: While grounded in lived experience, her work often evokes the spiritual – ancestral legacies, unseen lineage, the intangible that inhabits daily life. One writer describes her work as transcending digital collage to “delving into the spiritual realm exploring personal and cultural narratives.” africandigitalart.com
Why This Series Matters
Agency reclaimed: By using her own image and archive, Mongale reposition the Black female figure not as object, but as subject—controller of narrative, maker of memory.
Temporal negotiation: The meeting of past and present selves acknowledges that identity is not fixed. It is patched, layered, re-constructed. The collages allow her to show that journey.
Healing embodied: This is not “art about trauma” in the sense of spectacle. It is art as processing, re-claiming, living. When Mongale states her work is “about the practice of allowing myself to exist,” she signals a much deeper bed of meaning.
African digital aesthetic: At a time when African digital art is gaining visibility, Mongale’s practice matters—an example of how digital tools, self-portraiture and personal archive can combine to produce art that feels culturally specific, emotionally intimate and formally innovative.
Intersectional reflection: Her work sits at the intersection of gender, class, race, geography and diaspora. She came from township origins, engaged with the city, the global art market, and yet continues to reference the women and communities who raised her—rendering visible what often remains invisible.
Featured Artwork & Exhibition Highlights
In a 2020 exhibition titled Heaven on Earth, shown at Doyle Wham (London) in collaboration with Latitudes Art Fair, Mongale presented works such as Heaven on Earth (2020) and Own World (2020)—digital collages that marry self-image, surreal landscapes and layered narratives. FLO London
According to her Artlink profile, she is “currently working on a body of work that functions as a visual diary, where I document and process my experience of sexual assault through different stages of my ‘healing’ journey.” artlink
The 2020 “Portfolio” interview (via Mail & Guardian) reveals her genesis into collage: “My partner introduced me to collage-making through Photoshop … It allows me to be as complex and layered as I want to be.” The Mail & Guardian
Puleng Mongale’s art reminds us that healing is not linear and identity is never fixed. Her work embodies what African digital art does best: it reclaims narrative through innovation, using digital tools to make visible the invisible and to speak the unspeakable. Through her practice, Mongale merges self, archive, and spirit into a single visual language of survival and becoming. Her collages ask us to witness the process of recovery not as an endpoint, but as an ongoing act of creation—one where every layer, every fragment, and every memory contributes to the wholeness of being.
