Famous Ndebele artist keen to preserve culture
ESTHER Mahlangu’s colourful geometric artwork is exhibited in galleries around the world, but she remains in her South African village unfazed by fame and determined to preserve her ethnic Ndebele culture.
The 81-year-old painter and mural artist earned an international reputation with her Ndebele motifs at a time when the national art scene was focused on contemporary styles.
Now Johannesburg is hosting a major exhibition for Mahlangu, an elderly black woman with no art training who rose to global acclaim using a skill passed down for generations.
With just a chicken feather, Mahlangu first painted mud huts and chipboards before moving on to luxury cars, vodka bottles, skateboards and footwear as her intricate patterns became huge commercial hits.
At home in a dusty village in Mpumalanga, the sprightly great-grandmother looks nothing like an artist who has exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the 5th Biennale in Lyon, France, and London’s British Museum.
Unlike many locals, she still dresses in the distinctive Ndebele traditional attire, with heavy beaded necklaces and dozens of copper rings around her neck and legs.
“Working with famous people has not changed me,” she said.
“I am not intimidated by anything and not even once have I changed who I am to fit in with their culture.”
The only change she has incorporated into her work is replacing natural pigments of cow dung and soil with acrylic paint.
Mahlangu’s first big international break came in 1989, when she was 54.
Her ornately decorated house had caught the eye of French researchers, who invited her to the Pompidou Centre. In Paris, she painted a replica of her hut for an exhibition.
Mahlangu’s wrinkled face lights up in disbelief when showcasing what she has been doing since she was a child.
“I only used chicken feathers, no brushes,” she said.
“I am an ordinary Ndebele woman, doing what I was taught by my mother and grandmother.”
She said she was amazed by the interest her work attracted, an experience that prompted her to teach the age-old Ndebele skill to youngsters in her village.
“My aim is to preserve the Ndebele culture. I don’t want it to get lost with civilisation,” she said.
German carmaker BMW has collaborated with Mahlangu on two occasions, when she painted the body of their luxury sedans with her iconic Ndebele shapes. Her first collaboration with the company in 1991 made her the first woman to be invited to take part in the Art Car project.
The Melrose Gallery is showing a collection of Mahlangu’s latest work, a series of paintings paying tribute to Nelson Mandela. The paintings were created by embellishing prints of drawings by Mandela in 2001. — AFP