Arts that leaves you in bewilderment

 

As arts and culture continues to evolve in today’s world  we see various mediums of painting and sculpting where the artists creates new forms of art but the issues of originality and creativity often arises. This write up takes a peep into the strange balance that exists between the intensely macabre and the bizarrely beautiful in artist Nandipha Mntambo’s oeuvre. Invariably it leaves you haunted yet in awe of her distinctive aesthetic and technique that combines the use of cowhides, and hair with clever juxtaposition and positioning. One can only interpret her work as it is, a spectacle that leaves you repulsed or that piques your interest for the grotesque, yet profound. The artist brings issues of identity and conflict to the forefront, and she frequently addresses the dynamic tension that exists within the self, the push-pull between libido and mortido, life instinct and death drive. Concepts of powerlessness versus empowerment, the public versus the private selves, or the presentation of unexpected role reversals have arisen in some of her latest bodies of work.

Born in Swaziland in 1982 and raised in South Africa, Mntambo is a sculptor who has made cowhide her medium of choice.  Her choice is inspired and informed on one hand by a childhood dream where she found herself left with a pile of cowhides and on the other by her interest in science and forensics, which was her first passion before she decided to become an artist.

“I enjoy chemical processes. I was never really interested in ‘conventional’ materials and was lucky enough to have the opportunity to work with a taxidermist for a while. The thin line that exists between our understanding of attraction and repulsion has always been of interest to me. I developed my aesthetic in an attempt to destabilise/push this boundary while challenging how art material and the product are understood.”

 In describing the artist media, Gabi Ngcobo, in Art South Africa vol 04, issue 03, 2006 said “It is a material variously associated with wealth and power. The literal hairiness of her figures also functions as a distancing device... Her work encourages us to critique the politics and aesthetics of femininity and beauty and is suggestive of the ways in which (black) women are re-interpreting their bodies and claiming visibility.'

 She uses plaster moulds of her own body and envelops them with the still malleable cowhide that she has thoroughly treated and cured.  The hide becomes a beautiful and repulsive empty floating carrier. These hairy feminine shapes defy our notion of feminine beauty. The artist remembers her early years at Floating Figures, girls’ school where there was so much focus on getting rid of body hair. With her haunting simultaneously human and animal like, she deliberately seeks to provoke a sense of agitation. 

 She describes her use of cowhide “as a means to subvert expected associations with corporeal presence, femininity, sexuality and vulnerability.”  The animal/human association is not new but rarely has it been so provocative. The cowhides seem to be worn as garments caught in movement. As Mntambo explains, the many folds and creases were inspired by the move of the dress worn by a woman dancing the Paso Doble with her partner. She defines herself as existing between several worlds, and refuses to be located in one particular identity. Cowhide is a conceptually loaded substance and to mistake the (often dark) cowhide with the female figure is a contentious practice, which might arguably naturalize the ideological metonymy of women, blackness and nature. Other readings of Mntambo's work have centred on the traditional practice of 'ilobola' [bride-price] in South Africa, which is often criticised by feminists for reducing women to the level of possessions. Although these issues do play a part in Mntambo's attraction to the medium, it is reductive to read her production only in these terms. In filling out the vacated body of the cow with different forms, then vacating it again or re-embodying it herself, Mntambo utilizes the semantic layering embedded in her material to flesh out, exaggerate and ultimately - I would argue - deflate the terms which have kept people in subjugated states of embodiment. The quasi-scientific arguments which backed up the discourse of racism and sexism have long been discredited; however, their semantic legacy continues to haunt contemporary culture. It is this ghosting that Mntambo points to with her evocative and alluring sculptures.

“My work was never meant to be a direct exploration of the African Female body. I just happen to be African and female and use my body in my art making process.” She said.

 Mntambo addresses issues of gender, which are also at the core of her work.  She has more recently expanded her work to include video and photography where she explores further associations tied to the cow iconography.  The videos, which is be her first foray into the medium, translates her interest in femininity and cows into a cross-gender foray into bulls and the masculine arena of the bull-fight. It shows Mntambo as a matador in a deserted bull-fighting arena. She enacts a phantasmagoria bull-fight, making herself both the subject and the object of the work.

 Mythology plays an important part and helps position her work in a broader geographical context.

Nandipha Mntambo completed a Master of Fine Arts from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town. She was the 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for visual arts and she has been shown in group shows in the US, Europe, Africa, and Australia.