BILLIE ZANGEWA (b. 1973)
Untitled
2006
tapestry
BIOGRAPHY
Billie Zangewa is a Blantyre-born, Johannesburg-based artist who creates intricate, autobiographical collage tapestries that centralis Black womanhood, everyday domestic life and motherhood. She calls this ‘daily feminism’.
Her mother worked in the textile industry and, as a child, Zangewa witnessed the bond between her mother and other women as they sewed and completed other tasks together, which would later influence her work.
Zangewa graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhodes University in Grahamstown (now Makhanda). She tested several modes of expression, before choosing textile art as her preferred medium, in part due to its affordability and easy transportability, in part because of silk’s luminosity, reflective qualities and centrality to fashion. Fashion photography and shifting urban environments also influenced the style of her large-scale, pop-art influenced collages.
The Rebirth of Black Venus (2010) marked a shift in the her subject matter. The tapestry depicts the Johannesburg cityscape reduced to miniature proportions in comparison to the graceful but towering figure of Zangewa, who appears nude except for a banner encircling her body. Self-love has been recurring theme in much of her work since then.
She works primarily with raw silk offcuts in intricate hand-stitched collages, creating figurative compositions that explore her intersectional identity and challenge the historical stereotyping, objectification and exploitation of the Black female body. Her tapestries celebrate imperfection with their raw, irregular edges and cut-out sections. Working in a flat, colourful style, she weaves narratives that focus on mundane domestic preoccupations as well as universal themes that connect us to each other. Almost always the protagonist in her works, Zangewa becomes a heroine whose daily life is revealed through the scenes she illustrates.
Her art has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, including at the Grand Palais, Paris, France; SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, US; Brighton CCA, Brighton, UK; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, US; and Lehmann Maupin, London, UK.
She was among the 111 artists, collaborative duos, collectives and artist-led organisations invited to participate in the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, In Minor Keys, conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh.
Zangewa’s work is in several public and private collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library, Preston, United Kingdom; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston, Boston, MA; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa; JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom.