Born in 1999 in Tshwane, South Africa, Nano currently works in mixed media on paper. Nano studied Film Arts at the Open Window Institute in Pretoria and at AFDA in Johannesburg before deciding to focus solely on fine art.

His work borrows freely from popular culture, editorial photography, and ads for luxury brands. His flattened images have been intentionally reduced to vivid line and a minimal palette of striking colour. The stand-alone frames present themselves as bite-sized snippets pulled from the artist’s own ever-expanding satirical cartoon of perceived life. Through satire, acerbic characterisation of his subjects and sharp-witted prose, Nano’s work presents a biting critique of our current milieu.

The Next Best Thing is printed with archival inks on Fine Art Paper with a matte finish.

Image courtesy of the artist. Cr. Hayden Phipps.

'Nano Le Face (aka Ntwanano Shilubana) is a South-African based artist. He is fascinated by people’s obsession with the glamour, melodrama, and surreal nature of celebrity pop-culture, and how this is often paired with the loathing, self-deprecating nature of social media. Le Face’s work is full of satirical scenes adapted from the online content he scrolls past daily. Taking his cues from TikTok, Instagram, Lana Del Ray, vintage Vogue magazines, and various ephemera, he is able to morph pop culture into a range of cartoon-like drawings that each have an air of mystery about them. This mystery — reminiscent of the wild and fanciful interpretations created by the media — allows space for viewers of his work to make up their own worlds for the characters depicted. Le Face’s vignettes of Nancys, Sandras and Tiffanys, drawn on a plethora of found materials, act as vessels in which he critiques and exaggerates our preoccupation with love, consumerism, fame, and ourselves.'

- Emma Singleton for Damn Magazine, 2023

Click HERE to read the full interview. Image courtesy of the artist. Cr. Hayden Phipps.