User:ThirdBrownEye/Nandipha Mntambo

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Edit Notes:

-add picture of the artist

-elaborate on early/personal life (any background information on the artist)

-section off her work into different categories (i.e. sex, violence, etc.)

-add pictures of her work

-need to add more major works along with update of bibliography

Potential Sources:

https://www.everardlondon.com/artist/NANDIPHA_MNTAMBO/biography/ (.com website)

https://installationmag.com/nandipha-mntambo-in-her-skin/ (.com website)

https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.libezp.lib.lsu.edu/doi/full/10.1111/j.1527-2001.2012.01273.x (lsu libraries)

Lead
Nandipha Mntambo, born 1982, is a South African artist widely known for her sculptures, videos and photographs that focus on the human female body and identity utilizing natural, organic materials. Her art style has been self described as eclectic and androgynous. Her cowhide sculptures that connect the human form to nature are the best known forms of her work.

Life
Nandipha Mntambo was born in Swaziland, Southern Africa, in 1982. Growing up, her father was a Methodist pastor and later became a bishop. His occupation allowed her family to live in white neighborhoods during apartheid, an aspect of her life that serves as an influence for her art and identity as an artist. Prior to her career in art, her first choice was to study medicine. Mntambo was originally inspired to pursue a career in forensic pathology after coming home to her family dogs being killed by a stalker, but the sight of "dead bodies" proved to be overwhelming. On a whim, Mntambo decided to submit her high school art portfolio to the Michaelis School of Fine Art. From there, she was accepted into the University of Cape Town. In school she was formally trained as a sculptor, but also began to learn about videography, photography, and working with varied mediums. Mntambo soon after graduated with a master's degree in Fine Arts (with distinction) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in June of 2007. Mntambo is currently producing art, most recently exploring new mediums. She currently lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa with her daughter, who inspires most of her recent works.

Article body
In her work, Mntambo focuses on the human body and the organic nature of identity, using mainly natural, tactile materials, physical elements and experimenting with sculptures, videos and photography. One of her favorite materials to use in her pieces are the skin of the cow, often also used as a covering for human bodies – boneless sculptures – and thus oscillating between evoking the garments that can be shod at will and the bodies that once contained living, breathing, masticating beings with four stomachs. The idea to work with cowhide first came to her in a dream, her interest later blossomed as she wanted to study the hide to learn more about chemical processes. Inspired by the illusion of movement within the hard material of classical sculptures, Mntambo aimed to apply these concepts to the cowhide towards determining how to manipulate the malleability of the hide in contrast to the animal's perceived rigid, static figure. Due to that, she worked under the tutelage of a taxidermist to better understand how to tan hides. In doing so, she manipulates the hide to create folds and pleats in the material by tanning until it hardens upon dry. Mntambo embraces this ambiguity and likes to play with the tension between the sightly and the unsightly by manipulating how her viewers negotiate the two aspects of the hide. In doing so, Mntambo also creates a form of double consciousness, a two-fold binary of viewing be seeing the skin of the animal with the evidence of the human body through her contours, lines, and form. She uses her own body as the mould for these sculptures, thereby creating a memory of the human body from cowhide. However, she does not intend to make an explicit statement regarding femininity. Rather, Mntambo uses these hides to explore the division between animals and humans and the divide between attraction and repulsion. This aspect of her work has influenced her perception of contemporary South African women by allowing her to think differently about body hair on women becoming curious as to how viewers would interpret a completely hairy female form. In addition to hairy female forms, her sculptures typically manifest in forms of headless, legless, or armless figures. Throughout her art, Mntambo challenges traditional and nontraditional gender roles and identity by pushing the boundaries between human and animal, femininity and masculinity, attraction and repulsion, and life and death.

She states:

"My intention is to explore the physical and tactile properties of hide and aspects of control that allow or prevent me from manipulating this material in the context of the female body and contemporary art. I have used cowhide as a means to subvert expected associations with corporeal presence, femininity, sexuality and vulnerability. The work I create seeks to challenge and subvert preconceptions regarding representation of the female body."

"Themes of confrontation, protection and refuge play out particularly in relation to inner conflicts and to notions of self-love/hatred. The bronze, Sengifikile, uses my own features as a foundation, but takes on the guise of a bull. Referencing the head-and-shoulder busts of the Renaissance tradition I challenge male and female roles in society and expected associations with femininity, sexuality and vulnerability."

In the context of her photography Mntambo is heavily inspired by mythology and the idea of an animal-human species. She often places herself as the subject of her photos along with others and has stated that she finds it difficult to accurately represent her photographed subjects as real. It sometimes made her uncomfortable to face what she likes and does not like about herself in her digitally altered photographs. With her videography and performance art, Mntambo's performance piece Ukungenisa (2008) is a nine minute video portraying the artist as a bullfighter in an abandoned bullfighting arena in Mozambique. Being one of the few performances she has done in her career, the primary theme of the self dedicated production was for her to figure out how to become the fighter, animal, and audience all at once. The research she conducted ahead of this display consisted of trips to Spain and Portugal in hopes of shadowing bullfighters. However, her experience did not go as planned ultimately requiring her to hire a choreographer to guide her performance. She has stated that she views all of her artwork thus far as continuous and interconnected.

Major Works
As previously stated, Mntambo's collections of works mainly surround recurring themes such as the relationship between humans and animals, the feminine versus masculine, repulsion versus attraction, and life versus death. Her comparisons and juxtapositions of these art pieces reflect the complex relationships between each opposite. Her work also examines the fluidity of identity primarily through form, position, and dead matter by reconstructing and challenging viewer's perception of the visible versus invisible, our internal perceptions to external, and its manifestations within the fabric of life and death. Although her work evokes emotions and strong motifs, Mntambo states that her art is completely up to the interpretation of the viewers. Mntambo's art is featured around the world in large museums such as the Zeitz MOCAA (Cape Town), the High Museum (Atlanta, GA), and the Smithsonian (Washington DC).

Faena (2011) - Standard Banks Young Artist Award
In this collection, Mntambo explores the connection between a bull and a bullfighter in a five piece exhibition. She uses varied mediums in this collection, including works on paper, video, and sculpture. In the sculptures, Mntambo uses cowhide, cow hair, and resin. Through these pieces, she explores the dynamic relationship between humans and animals while challenging the stereotypical relationships between men and women.

Emabutfo (2009)
Mntambo created this art piece including twenty four sets of figures lined up in a military-like fashion. She created the molds of the figures by using stretched cowhide, cow hair, and injecting resin into the sculptures. To form these molds, Mntambo used her own body in addition to her mother's. Some viewers believe that women are portrayed as cattle in this art piece, as being sold or traded. While Mntambo states her work has no set message, particularly in relation to domesticity and femininity, this is still a popular interpretation held amongst viewers. Mntambo chooses to actively focus on the materials function of larger themes relating to humans' connectivity to nature, animals, life and death.

Europa (2008)
This art piece portrays a sort of twisted version of a self-portrait from Mntambo. It is a print made on cotton rag paper. In this piece, Mntambo is pictured as a minotaur, staring directly into the eyes of the viewers. Here, she continues to explore previously stated themes of the relationship between humans and animal and attraction vs. repulsion through an androgenetic lens. Mntambo draws inspiration from Picasso, who often used the "minotaur" creature as a way to embrace masculinity. To juxtapose this, she also paints herself in a way to evoke a sense of "primal sexuality," drawing ideas from the way many enslaved black women were portrayed in Westernized paintings.

Titfunti emkhatsini wetfu (2013)
This collection primarily featured headless and legless cowide sculptures wearing dress garments. In contrast to previous works, the figures' postures are more fantastical and whimsical as they're suspended from the ceiling with the end of the dress garments giving an illusion of movement, billowed and ruffled within the air. Expanding upon themes Mntambo explores, she states she uses cowhide due to its transcontinental connection and significance to every civilization. As mentioned previously, viewers commonly speculate the cowhide's significance as a form of currency, exchange, and its connection specifically to women, particularly those in South Africa in the form of dowries. However, despite these widely perceived notions, Mntambo resists them to uncover the relationship between the African and European perspective through material in the manner she does with sexuality and identity. She does this through the absence of recognizable animal parts leaving dialogue and room for interpretation to viewers. Mntambo believes the skins are symbols of "sacrifices in rituals of birth, marriage, thanksgiving, appeasement, and death" while also believing there's power in the skin's removal. The erasure of skin as a later of surface also denotes to further concepts of the human and animal body's position, existence, and states of being such as exploitation, consumption, objectification, and subjugation, alluding to the larger theme of life and death. Expounding further on the two-fold binary of viewing Mntambo has curated for the viewer between the animal and human form, she also does this with the presence and absence of skin. Mntambo simultaneously creates an entirely new form of existence between the merging of these two forms while leaving the viewer to question the animal's isolation from its skin to focus specifically on material as a separate entity. It raises further considerations and debates as to whether a an entitys' essence its still mainained without integral components of that entity, alluding to human's individual, microscopic position in relationship to the the world, systems and operations integral to society both internal and external, seen and unseen. Mntambo's exploration of the human body through other forms, particularly the animal challenges one's notion of positionality while repositioning the viewer beyond traditional contexts, destabilizing our belief system and preconceived notions surrounding identity of invisibility versus visibility.

Awards, Fellowships, and Residencies
2013     Between the Lines Exhibition Participant, Cape Town/Berlin

Citivella Ranerie Residency

Between the Lines Exhibition Participant

Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art

2010     Wits/BHP Billiton Fellowship

The SPACES World Artists Program (SWAP) Residency

2005     Curatorial Fellowship, Brett Kebble Art Awards

2004     Mellon Meyers Fellowship

2003     Mellon Meyers Fellowship