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Joseph Clark Collection

Mia Chaplin

Born 1990, Durban · Painting and sculpture

Mia Chaplin (born 1990, Durban, South Africa) is a Cape Town-based painter and sculptor whose impasto paintings of female figures deal with sexuality, intimacy and violence.

In the collection

About the artist

Mia Chaplin was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1990 and lives and works in Cape Town (WHATIFTHEWORLD). She completed a BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town in 2011 (WHATIFTHEWORLD). She works in oil and acrylic on canvas and paper, with richly textured impasto surfaces, and also makes sculpture in bronze and plaster (WHATIFTHEWORLD; Gillian Jason Gallery).

She describes her work as impressions of the female experience, dealing with sexuality, sensuality, intimacy and violence (WHATIFTHEWORLD). In Held Tight, her solo exhibition at WHATIFTHEWORLD in Cape Town from 1 February to 29 March 2025, large nude female figures, painted in thick impasto, merge into one another across diptychs and triptychs (WHATIFTHEWORLD). Her earlier solo shows with the gallery include Binding Forms (2016), Mouth (2018) and Swamp (2022), and she has also shown solo with No Man's Art Gallery in Amsterdam (WHATIFTHEWORLD). In London she was one of five artists in The Many Within Her at Gillian Jason Gallery, from 5 March to 5 April 2025 (Gillian Jason Gallery).

She has held residencies at Fountainhead in Miami (2023), where she received the Fountainhead Residency Artist Prize, the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2018), the Nirox Arts Foundation in Johannesburg (2016) and the OBRAS Foundation in Alentejo, Portugal (2015) (WHATIFTHEWORLD). Her work is held in collections including the Spier Arts Trust and the Homestead Collection in South Africa, the LAM Museum in the Netherlands and the Francesca Lavazza Collection in Italy (WHATIFTHEWORLD).

Sources

  1. WHATIFTHEWORLD, artist profile
  2. WHATIFTHEWORLD, Held Tight (2025)
  3. WHATIFTHEWORLD, Swamp (2022)
  4. Artsy, artist page
  5. Gillian Jason Gallery, artist page
  6. Gillian Jason Gallery, The Many Within Her (2025)
  7. Fountainhead, artist page
A room in the Joseph Clark Collection hung salon-style: framed paintings, drawings and photographs cover two white walls, with sculptures on a teak sideboard and a white plinth below.
Installation view of the Joseph Clark Collection, including works by Zhang Enli, Tamsin Relly, Glenn Ligon, Louise Bourgeois, Ray Parker, Phyllida Barlow, Bengt Rosenström, Antonio Tarsis, Hugo Glendinning, Tim A Shaw, France-Lise McGurn, Mia Chaplin, Fabian Peake and Yukako Shibata.

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