Work of Billie Zangewa is part of ‘How Far How Near’ , Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam.
Till: February 1, 2015.
Midnight Aura, 2012.
About:
“My career took off so effortlessly that I felt this was a sign of what direction I should take,” says artist Billie Zangewa, winner of the 2004 Absa L’atelier Gerard Sekoto Award.
Born in 1973 in Blantyre in Malawi, Zangewa, who describes her art as “self-exploratory, visually sensual”, has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, with majors in graphics and printmaking, from Rhodes University in Grahamstown.
At the age of 10 she started drawing fashion illustrations, and was by then a fashion fanatic, devouring Vogue magazine and watching Video Fashion Monthly.
The Wilde Side, 2013.
After her studies she settled in Gaborone where she first worked with oil pastels, often depicting glamorous women. This organically grew to experimenting with textiles, in particular silk. She made handbags finished with embroidery depicting Botswana flora and fauna, and in 1996, she participated in a group show in Gaborone. This was followed by a solo exhibition entitled Gestures, at the Alliance Francaise in the city. In 1997 she was the winner of an Artists in Botswana Award for the Visual Arts in the graphics category.
The Future Waits for No One, 2011
FROM GABORONE TO JOZI
Later that year she moved to Johannesburg where she spent a few years working in fashion and advertising. “The landscape of the Johannesburg CBD then became a source of inspiration and she began to do deconstructed interpretations onto her handbags,” indicates her website. In 1999 she participated in a Rhodes University retrospective, entitled Printwork.
When she drove down Commissioner Street in Johannesburg soon after arriving in the city, she was “awed by the reflective quality of a number of the high rise buildings along that street. Later, upon visiting a fabric shop, she noticed how the raw silk swatches behaved in a similar manner to the glass, their reflections changing tone and hue as they shifted,” writes Michael Smith on theartthrob.co.za website.
Top of the World, 2013.
He goes on to say that she “clearly revels in the quality of the silk”. “She soon began experimenting with this fabric, allowing it to assert a new, painterly identity in the context of her street scenes, group scenes and portraits.”
In 2001 she took part in a group show at the Spark Gallery in Johannesburg, and in 2003 she showcased her work in three exhibitions in the city, one of which was entitled Handbags.
“Her works are made from fabric, sewn painstakingly onto a base in a way that allows her to build a picture and suggest the illusionism of painting or photography, but which lets the textures of the various fabrics disrupt easy consumption,” states Smith
(Lucille Davie in Play Your Part Magazine, August 2014)
Sweet Dreams, 2010.
