COOLEST GOGO ON THE PLANET!
She’s 80 years old, but Mpumalanga’s famous artist spreads her blanket daily, takes up a feather and paints, writes Rea Khoabane
AN elderly woman walks barefoot in the yard of her rural home. But this is no ordinary woman, and her home is no ordinary house.
She lays down a blanket on the concrete stoep as though she is going to warm herself in the sun — but she is preparing a comfortable spot to start on her daily routine, painting.
Gathering her art materials, she invites me to sit next to her. “I’m used to people coming to my house to interview me and I never know where these stories go,” she says.
That’s no wonder. Esther Mahlangu is an internationally renowned artist who has travelled the world. For many years, tourists, art lovers and journalists have made the pilgrimage to her home in the predominantly Ndebele village of Mabhoko, two hours from Johannesburg.
It’s an artistic wonder, painted with traditional Ndebele motifs — lots of colour and geometry. This morning the walls gleam bright and brilliant against the clear blue Mpumalanga winter sky.
Mahlangu is in traditional Ndebele dress from head to toe. This includes a tower of brass rings around her neck, more brass on her arms and legs and heavy bands of beads around her ankles.
Reaching for a plastic two-litre bottle that’s been cut in half, Mahlangu starts mixing a black paste with water.
She uses soil to achieve the black. “I mix it with water because it’s not paint, it’s soil, and every time I add water it becomes fresh and wet,” she says.
“To create the colour that I want, I just choose the colour of the soil I’m going to use and mix it with water. I get the soils in the veld. I get the black soil closer to the mines.”
She is working on a board that she has painted white.
Some of the materials she uses for colour are white limestone, ash mixed with water, black, red and ochre clay and cow dung.
The green is created from either cow dung or leaves.
Her brushes are chicken feathers and twigs.
“I love using the chicken feather because it’s my culture. I love the intricate paint application . . . it gives me the straight line that I want,” she says.
Mahlangu’s art is a retelling of the rich Ndebele history and culture. The traditions she draws from have been handed down from mother to daughter for generations.
“My mother and grandmother used their hands and I was taught to paint with the chicken feather.”
She draws a straight line on the white board, showing that only a chicken feather can make the thin line she wants.
“Back in those days they used to paint only black and white lines and as time went by I added colour and created new designs,” she says.
Even though she prefers to use traditional materials, she uses conventional acrylic and other materials for her many international commissions.
The most famous of these was in 1991, when she became the first woman to create a BMW Art Car, alongside creative titans such as Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol and David Hockney. Her designs were also reproduced in 1997 on the tails of British Airways planes.
This year Swedish shoe brand Eytys (pronounced “eighties”) worked with Mahlangu to design a collection of sneakers.
She will be painting a new BMW 7 series interior to be displayed at the international art fair Frieze London in October.
Mahlangu was born in 1935 on a farm outside Middelburg, Mpumalanga, one of five children. She never went to school.
Like many Ndebele women of her generation, she was taught beadwork and wall-painting at a young age, a sign to others when they saw the uniquely decorated homes that “an Ndebele girl
lives there”.
Her work first attracted international attention in the late ’80s when curators from Paris’s Pompidou Centre discovered her talent.
At the time Mahlangu was in her 50s and was living not in Mabhoko but at the Botshabelo Mission Station — an open-air museum established to preserve the culture of the Ndebele — in Middelburg.
Researchers from the Pompidou had seen her home and set about tracking down this extraordinary talent.
“When the French arrived at the museum, they showed me a picture of a house and asked me where this house is and then I answered and said: ‘That’s my house in Mabhoko — why do you have a picture of my house?’ Then they said: ‘Esther, we’ve been looking for you.’ ”
She was invited to travel to France.
“I had never been on an aeroplane, I didn’t know how far I was going — I was just told I’m going to paint.”
She was accompanied by family members and the then mayor of Middelburg, Piet Bezuidenhout, to the airport. She asked that a bag of mealie meal be transported with her luggage.
“I also requested before I got on the plane that I don’t want to sleep at a hotel, I want to sleep at a guesthouse because I knew at a guesthouse I can cook for myself . . . so I was clever,” she laughs.
“After a long flight, when I arrived in France, I was presented with a house that is similar to mine and I was asked to paint it in a traditional Ndebele style.”
Her French hosts watched her cook pap and she offered them a taste. At first they hesitated, but liked it and asked for more.
As she concentrates on getting the perfect line, she is in her own world, creating magic.
She has a black tattoo from her forehead to her nose, a symbol of being smart. “As young kids, this is how you were differentiated from ordinary kids.”
I ask her if I can also try to draw the lines using the chicken feather. She agrees, before adding: “I’m not going to give you my canvas, because you’re going to waste my material.” Once I have my own plastic bottle and chicken feather, I start painting on a piece of cardboard, trying to copy her sure hand. I make a mess. My lines are uneven.
The older generation refer to younger Ndebele who have abandoned their traditional dress as “girls who wear trousers”. For Mahlangu, every item she wears has meaning and resonates with memories.
She stands up and flips up the Ndebele blanket draped over her shoulders to show her skirt made of faded animal skin. “It’s cow skin that my husband gave to me when we got married.”
The bronze and brass rings gleaming around her neck, arms and legs are known as idzila and, along with the shape of her beaded apron, are a sign of her married status.
“All my gold accessories are my wedding rings. I got the neckpiece from my parents when I was getting married and the ones on my hands and feet from my husband.
“At night I take off the skirt and other accessories, but my rings don’t come out. I’ve been wearing the rings for over 40 years. My husband and family put them on and I have never attempted to take them off. They’re my identity and part of who I am.”
Does she travel the world dressed like this? She laughs. “How should I dress? These are my clothes. I’ve been to France, Korea, America and other parts of the world. People stop me and ask where I come from. I’ve missed flights because of my ac- cessories when I go through the security check at airports. They take me to a security room to check.”
I ask if she remembers which year she moved to Mabhoko. She says she can’t remember, but can tell me the events of the day.
“All I remember is that on that day it was my second son’s homecoming from the mountains after initiation.”
But Mahlangu doesn’t like discussing her personal life too much.
“It was painful losing my children and husband. I don’t think I will be able to bear the pain of seeing the Ndebele culture die.”
To preserve the culture in her own community, Mahlangu has taught many children to paint at her home. One of her graduates and now employee, Tshepo Joseph Motshwane, has been painting since 2009.
“I’ve loved art since I was in school,” says Motshwane. “Thanks to Gogo Esther I do what I love.
“In this village it’s either you play soccer or you become a painter. Gogo has created employment for us and I don’t know where I would be if I wasn’t here with her, painting.”
The following day, we wake early so that we can say our goodbyes. By the time I surface she is already up, washing dishes, and offers to make me coffee or tea.
She takes out a packet of poultry feed from the cupboard and makes her way to the back of the house to feed her chickens. She gets out her broom to sweep the concrete pavement clean.
Then she gathers her blankets and painting materials to start her daily routine.
I ask what motivates her to paint every day.
“My culture,” she says.
I just choose the colour of the soil I’m going to use and mix it with water. I get the soils in the veld. I get the black soil closer to the mines