Osiah Masekoameng (b. 1965) is a South African printmaker, photographer and sculptor associated with Johannesburg’s workshop-based print culture and the collaborative environments that shaped South African art production in the post-apartheid period. He studied at Technikon Witwatersrand and later undertook brief training at Rutgers University in the United States, gaining exposure to international approaches to printmaking that informed his work in South Africa.
His association with Artists Proof Studio in Johannesburg placed him within a network of printmakers, photographers and artists for whom workshop collaboration, technical skill and community engagement were central values. Masekoameng worked at Artists Proof Studio as a printer, technical assistant and darkroom manager, contributing to collaborative print projects and educational activities through which the studio supported emerging artists and maintained access to printmaking facilities.
His own practice, during this period and afterwards, focused on scenes of labour, transport, urban life and the small dramas of everyday life and survival, rendered with a directness and empathy that reflect the workshop tradition of attentiveness to social subject matter. His subjects include workers, street scenes and township environments observed with the eye of someone familiar with the conditions he depicts.
Although less extensively documented in formal art-historical literature than some of his contemporaries, Masekoameng formed part of a wider generation for whom workshop practice, technical mastery and collaborative production were central to developing a democratic visual culture in post-apartheid South Africa.
His work contributes to the rich tradition of South African printmaking that emerged through the workshop movement during the 1990s and 2000s.
