Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmankgato Helen Sebidi

Written by Sam Mathe
Tuesday, 16 August 2011 12:44

One wonders whether all these names appear in Sebidi’s identity documents, but the fact that her book is titled in this way is a clear indication that she attaches enormous importance to her identity as a black woman and how this identity has shaped her world view as an artist.

Sebidi’s main influence was her grandmother, a gifted decorator of walls in the traditional Tswana style. She raised young Makgabo to cherish traditional African value systems as opposed to what she regarded as the “selfish values of city life”.

Sebidi’s early works are exuberant paintings that explore this traditional world; her rural scenes often show women completing their daily chores. Her art has since evolved into complex works characterised by fantastical and mythological images that tend to fuse opposites – the urban and the rural, men and women, and so on. Sebidi brings together these contrasting realities in what the author describes as “works of great visionary and prophetic power”.

This is an informative portrait of one of the country’s foremost female painters.

Author: Juliette Leeb-Du Toit

Publisher: David Krut Publishing