Thus, again, if the works can't be
incorporated or tamed into discourse of
gender representation, nor to the terms of the new critical
language of
gender, racial identity, national identity politics, they also can't be reduced to the purely formal terms of the earlier discourse that had characterized painting from the late 1940s to the 1970s.
By
incorporating influences from his ethnic and cultural background such as the Xhosa
language and references to traditional craft, ritual, sexual orientation,
gender, and nationality into his works, Hlobo address the constant shifting and subjective nature inherent in these identifiers.