Lena Hugo

Lena Hugo has been a full time artist since graduating from the University of Pretoria in 1996.

She concentrates her energies on pastel drawings. Her highly finished, detailed, expressions of people, mostly South African and migrant hand labourers transcends conventional notions of realism not so much because of her technical ability,  but because her drawings of people somehow capture the essence of each particular subject.
Her fibre artworks are most often made from re-appropriated clothing previously worn and owned by South African and migrant labourers.

Through her portraits and other artworks she investigates our universal human condition, our transient, fragile nature and the cycle of birth, death and resurrection.
She also explores our fear of death, of disappearing or of lacking significance and how it sometimes manifests in destructive behaviour towards other humans as well as towards animals and nature.