Enchantment

Nandipha Mntambo works across photography, sculpture and video to explore the tensions and boundaries between animals and humans, masculinity and femininity, repulsion and attraction, and life and mortality. She is best known for her figurative sculptures formed of cowhide, a key material in her practice.
Born in Swaziland, Mntambo lives and works in Johannesburg. Originally intending to study forensic pathology, she studied Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town. Her acute interest in physiology is evident in her work.
Cattle farming is a hugely significant element of African agriculture, imbued with widely different local significations. South Africa is the largest producer of beef in Africa. Mntambo states: ‘I have used cowhide as a means to subvert expected associations with corporeal presence, femininity, sexuality and vulnerability.’
Enchantment is a freestanding cowhide sculpture, moulded using resin into the form of a woman. Its curvaceous silhouette alludes to sexuality and the stance and posture are strong, confident and vivacious. The cow tails strewn on the floor around the sculpture give a sense of luscious vitality and abundance.
Nandpiha Mntambo was the winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2011. She participated in Regarding Africa: Contemporary Art and Afro-Futurism at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art in 2017, and Dak’art Biennale, Dakar in 2016. Mntambo also represented South Africa at the 56^th Venice Biennale in 2015. That same year, she participated in The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt.