CG’OISE NTCOXO (1950 – 2013)

BIOGRAPHY

Cgʼoise Ntcoxo was of the Ncoakhoe people, speakers of the Naro language, and was born in the Ghanzi District of Botswana. She was a member of the Kuru Art Project.

In the early 1990s, some of her work was shown in a gallery in London and seen by representatives of British Airways, who decided to purchase one of her pieces and use it as the basis for a design in their ‘ethnic livery’ scheme. A representative for the airline travelled to Botswana to see her. By her telling, she was handed ‘a piece of paper and told … to make a cross’. Despite the fact that she was illiterate, this transaction was held to be binding and to have caused her to transfer the rights to her work. She received 12 000 pula for her work. At the time, her husband was ill with tuberculosis, her daughter was unemployed and she was responsible for supporting a large family.

During her career, she collaborated with a group of other San artists from the Kuru Art Project on the publication of Qauqaua, an artists’ book published in Johannesburg in 1996. In 1999, she was one of eight artists, four from the Kalahari and four from New Mexico, to participate in a cultural exchange with the University of New Mexico in which they would create a suite of lithographs on the subject of tricksters in folklore. She is represented in the collections of the Portland Museum of Art and the city of Albuquerque, New Mexico, which displayed her lithograph Jujubu and |Xam Veldfood in its City and County Government Building. In 2004, her work appeared on a postage stamp issued by Botswana, one of a set of four depicting works by contemporary artists; others represented in the set included Nxaedom Qhomatca and Qgoma Ncokg’o.

Late in life Ntcoxo was taken in by fellow artist Coex’ae Qgam, with whom she lived until the latter’s death. Ntcoxo herself died of a stroke, leaving almost no estate.

SOURCE
‘Cgʼoise Ntcoxo,’ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cgʼose_Ntcoxʼo.