A retrospective delves into the depth, symbolism and global reach of the renowned artist’s work
Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.Holding pattern: A retrospective exhibition of Esther Mahlangu’s work, which references Ndebele painting, a practice passed down the generations, is on at Wits Art Museum.
Mahlangu rose to international prominence in 1991 when she became the first woman, and the first African artist, to paint a BMW Art Car, joining an illustrious list of global artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. The retrospective traces a timeline of her work from 1980, when she was at the Middelburg Cultural History Museum, to 1989, when she exhibited a mural at Musée d’Angoulême, a public museum in Angoulême, France. It takes us from the first documentary on Mahlangu, titled, which aired on TV1 that same year, and beyond, right up to last year.
“We often think we have seen all of her,” Ntombela says. “The reason why this exhibition is important is because of the archive, which demonstrates the breadth of her work and how far she has produced work outside South Africa.” “Often, the biggest challenge in South African art history is this focus on the biography of the artist, rather than sitting and really understanding what it means to be talking about the emergence of practice in the early Eighties,” she says.
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