Praça de Touros
2008
Standing alone in a deserted and dilapidated coliseum, Nandipha Mntambo is dressed for a fight. She has enacted a solemn ritual based on her study of bullfighting, when a matador’s uniform—called a traje de luces, or suit of lights—is put on to prepare for battle. Nandipha has made her own suit, out of the hides of cattle, but unfurls the distinctive red cape of a matador. She tailored this encounter after discovering this architectural monument in Mozambique, and conducting research on bullfighting in Portugal.
Nandipha states, “Watching bullfighting is the most strangely addictive thing that I have ever experienced. The bull is sedated and it stays alone the night before the fight… bulls that are destined for fighting are treated like the best thing on earth from birth.…They are fed the best food. They have huge pastures to run around in, and the day before the fight, their lives change. They experience a strange, quiet solitude.” Enacting this fight alone, she equates this private spectacle as a way to confront an internal struggle with her own animalistic instincts. She is both the bull and the bullfighter.
Nandipha often includes references to cows in her work, with the reminder that nearly every civilization in the world has a connection to them. She has even originated a process to shape and preserve hides for her performances and sculptures that have gained international acclaim. Since receiving the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2011, and has had numerous solo shows at the Stevenson Gallery (South Africa). Her first European solo exhibition was in Stockholm in 2013, and her work was included in The Divine Comedy at the National Museum of African Art (Washington, DC) and is part of Disguise: Masks and Global African Art at the Seattle Art Museum (2015).
Archival pigment on rag paper
Sheet: 19 11/16 × 19 11/16 in. (50 × 50 cm)
Image: 15 13/16 in. (40.2 cm)
Frame: 20 1/2 × 20 1/2 in. (52.1 × 52.1 cm)
Gift of Josef Vascovitz and Lisa Goodman
2014.29
Provenance: Zeitz Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa; purchased from Zeitz by Josef Vascovitz, Hunts Point, WA
Photo: iocolor
