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Umfelokati Wenhlaba (Widow of the Earth)

Date2014

Label TextUsing her own body as a mold and cowhide as a covering, Nandipha Mntambo’s sculpture prompts many questions: Why does she make sculpture out of cow hide? “I enjoy chemical processes. I was never really interested in ‘conventional’ materials… I’ve always been interested in challenging our understanding of boundaries. Pushing that thin line that exists between attraction/repulsion, animal/human, male/female.” (2012) Why are the folds of the hide rippling? “I was always intrigued by the use of marble and stone in classical sculptures and how the illusion of movement was created in these hard materials. I was trained by a taxidermist who taught me a process of tanning that results in the hide becoming quite hard once dry. Within this process I shape the hide while it is still malleable to create folds and pleats and allow it to dry and stiffen.” (2013) Is this, as one critic said, “intensely macabre and bizarrely beautiful?” “The work I create seeks to challenge and subvert preconceptions regarding representation of the female body. The hair-covered but arguably beautiful female figures I create disrupt perceptions of attraction and repulsion. Being confronted with a hairy life-size woman who is not necessarily unequivocably repulsive causes various reactions, which have encouraged some viewers to re-think their ideas of the desirable.” (2007) Nandipha studied with the renowned sculptor Jane Alexander at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, graduating in 2007. She won the Standard Bank Young Artists Award for Visual Art 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).

Object number2015.8

ProvenanceThe artist; [Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg and Capetown]

Photo CreditCourtesy STEVENSON Johannesburg and Cape Town

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Disguise: Masks and Global African Art, June 18 - Sept. 7, 2015 (Los Angeles, California, Fowler Museum at UCLA, Oct. 18, 2015 - Mar. 13, 2016; Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn Museum, Apr. 29 - Sept. 18, 2016).Published ReferencesMcClusky, Pamela and Erika Dalya Massaquoi. Disguise: Masks and Global African Art. Seattle: Seattle Art Museum in association with New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015

Credit LineAfrican Art Acquisition Fund and General Acquisition Fund

Dimensions74 13/16 x 51 3/16 x 11 13/16 in. (190 x 130 x 30 cm)

MediumCowhide, resin, polyester mesh