Women Artists

"“My art has evolved from the tribal tradition of decorating our homes. The patterns I have used on the BMW Art Car marry tradition to the essence of BMW.”"

"“I have always had an interest in where things come from and where they’re going and in my works I focus on the intrinsic connection that paint has with land.”"

"To ensure that her work has a minimal impact on the environment Carolyn’s work involves the collection and reclamation of spent paint from painters – ranging from international artists to local contract painters. She removes the leftover paint from tins or cans and uses this paint to create her masterpieces such as Threshold and Transcodes featured in this Blog post. She even uses the hardened bits of nail varnish."

"“The original patterns that were painted on the houses in the past were part of a ritual of Ndebele people to announce events like a birth, death, wedding, or when a boy goes off to the initiation school. I started painting on canvas and board as I realized not everybody will be able to see the Ndebele painting in Mpumalanga where I live, and I felt I need to take it to them to see. This is how my work started to be exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.”"

"The old people told us stories...about how people live and...about how to see. They "read" the clouds. We used to sit outside in the courtyard, and especially in the very bright moonlight when there were a lot of clouds they used to read the stories for us and tell us: look at that, look at the soldiers, look at this! And they would tell us: you're going to have to see other life that's coming."

"As a teenager, Sebidi became a domestic worker and estranged from her mother and step-father. Sebidi sewed and knitted and decided to pursue her art in her off-time with encouragement from the wife of her employer, who also pushed Sebidi towards formal training."

"Through her unique depiction of the human figure, we come to appreciate Sebidi’s representation of different forms of black being, and a search into the relationship between humanism, spiritualism and the contemporary black African condition."

"“Our young people don’t wear the clothes or respect their forefathers, the girls have hair extensions and wear western clothes. This does not make me feel comfortable. They are vandalising our traditions. This is why I talk to them, try to motivate them with my travels and teach them too about Aids.”"

"Cashdan, Marina (23 September 2016). "Esther Mahlangu Is Keeping Africa's Ndebele Painting Alive". Artsy. Retrieved 24 March 2025."

"“I feel immense pressure because I really want to represent my identity correctly and authentically, make sure it’s being celebrated and not exploited for monetary gain or trendiness. But I take comfort in knowing that my community really supports me, and is really encouraging me to continue to do what I do. And I trust my own decisions.”"

"...I can now marry the two worlds – fashion and fine art aren't far off from each other."

""I love to travel, but I love most to come home again. It makes me happy if people like Ndebele art.”"

"“I love to paint and have been doing it my whole life. I will paint anything, as long as there’s a benefit where my culture can be preserved, where somebody growing up can value and never forget their Ndebele roots.”"

"There were no museums and galleries in the town I grew up in; that was foreign to me."

"“I was blown away by how people were creating digital art with all this software I’d never heard of, and communicating just using their art,”"

"“I have a friend who struggles financially, and I love the way it’s reflected in her tubes with every last drop squeezed out of them. Other tubes have remnants such as hairs trapped in paint that has oozed out of the tube and dried, or the smudged paint fingerprints where they have been squeezed.”"

"I had everything I needed, and I went to a good high school which was multiracial. Many families couldn't afford to send their kids there but I was fortunate that my mum was able to. I guess that also pushed me in a certain direction."

"This culture must not die. Our young people are vandalising our traditions. This is why I try to motivate them"

"“I build layer upon layer and before I know it, it is 10 kg.”"

"The self is explored as an ongoing process of construction in time and place. The presence and absence of the body in the work points to the idea that one's identity is not static, and constantly in a state of flux."

"I don’t have a ‘feminist artist statement’ as such. Being a woman is only one aspect of who I am."

"Her work contemplates the feeling of social rejection, censure, and disapproval that comes with diverging from the established guidelines of accepted and expected behaviour."

"Searle pays constant attention to the social issues and movements in South Africa, such as xenophobia, access to housing, land and political protests. Her work is not reducible to simple poignant condemning. Rather, through her visual language, ripe with symbolism and narrativity, she creates the entanglement of poetic and violent imagery which captures the contradictions and complexities of South Africa."

"“Ndebele painting comes from a context of architecture. It is the painting of the house.""

"“Geometry and pattern is a theme that just permeates African art,”"

"Without providing any definite answers, I think my work raises questions about attitudes towards race and gender. I think it operates on different levels and reflects different racial and political experiences - but I don't think my pieces are limited by that. I hope they transcend and go beyond that, and provide a space for illusion and fantasy. They reflect a desire to present myself in various ways to counter the image that has been imposed on me. Race is inevitable in South Africa."

"I first met Tracey Rose eleven years ago. I was researching the connections between healing and art in the work of contemporary artists from Africa. There was something in her art that spoke of the shaman, the alchemist, the revealer of wounds, the reorderer of worlds. From the beginning, I loved all the facets of her and of her work: the mischief and joy and delight of the girl; the boundless sensuality and wisdom of the woman; the vastness of spirit, placing her somewhere between this plane and another, channeling perpetually distant truths, some more gentle and others with more violent vibratory force."

"Rose embodies various caricatures of beauty, from porn star Cicciolina to the European Queen, invoking those forms of masking and masquerade that in their grotesque heightening of contour, of color, of symbolism, reveal an essence usually hidden."

"If we are to look at Rose’s career in the form of a linear timeline exhibiting important moments in the artist’ career, we see that her work is a threaded by essential fractiles through a landscape of powerful ideas, she is listening and responding to conditions."

"Cushing, Nathan (17 September 2014). "South African artist painting commissioned murals at VMFA". RVA News. Retrieved 24 March 2025."

"We were denied the experience of knowing what Nelson Mandela looked like. We were denied the experience of each other's lives." Still, "one developed ways around the system that were illicit but expressive . . . we all learned, as it were, to wiggle and squiggle."

"Her figures of traditional ceremonies, women with babies, and those that capture daily life around her reflect profound expressiveness and mastering of her craft. She conveys the experience of apartheid from a Venda women’s perspective focusing in the exploration of her origins, displacement, race, and sex."

"Her skill made her the first black woman, and the only Venda woman in South Africa, to become a famous wood carver. She also began to create works which followed more contemporary themes."

"“As children grow up today, they’re losing their culture. I don’t want my culture to die. That’s why I teach children Ndebele art. They must know their culture and where they come from.”"

"The work that I’m making happens, stylistically, because of all the financial restrictions that I have to go through in order to make it. Sometimes I hustle, I ask for favours. Sometimes I’m using a lesser kind of grade of material, but I know it’s like that because of the necessity of having the work made. That adds a richness to the work."

"There are more gentle ways to make art."

"This is the picture of a woman who, after some differences with her husband, embarks on a lonely journey with food over her head for her child,"

"When you start to perform a particular character for the media or historians, you get locked into them. So even when you start writing, there’s no space for your words to be published. Now that I’m an academic, I can say what I like and write what I like. When I write what I like, it’s going to be fucken dangerous."

"Some youths are lazy and addicted to alcohol and drug abuse. That is also killing our country,"

"These days, people are killing each other and killing children as well. It is very disturbing. We are living in a society that needs leadership."

"People from all over the world, who are the most rigorous thinkers, were making work out of stuff in real time. That’s not necessarily paint on canvas; it’s material and matter that speaks. It blew my mind. I cried for a year. I couldn’t. I had a breakdown because I realised the depth of the deception and how far and controlled it was. Seeing people of colour make art in my lifetime blew me the fuck away."

"Tracey Rose is not a practitioner who jumps at every curatorial opportunity offered her, and has been known to withdraw from more than one exhibition if the circumstances have not seemed right."

""I started because of a dream. It took a very long time, because I didn't understand it well. This was in 1965 and in 1974, I started the work"."

"Her work represents a mode of African modernist painting and sculpture, wherein she depicts her experience of having grown up and living in the South African countryside, and later her experiences as a black artist, living and working under an apartheid regime."

"The performance that happens as an artist within that space becomes a political decision to keep the work alive, relevant and moving. If I didn’t I would be ostracised even more."

"If nothing happens, our children will die suffering, like their grandparents. We sacrifice, but we are not seeing the changes."

"I believe that artwork should not be hidden, but the manner in which we have been robbed, it keeps one worried that it's better to keep one's work on the shelves,"

"“I want them to take away a sense of excitement, a sense of how vibrant the arts are in Africa,”"

"I want to know how do I keep expanding what’s possible in the legal range with my body. It’s kind of theatre for adrenaline junkies. Once you start performance art, you keep chasing the dragon."

"“Over the past few years I have collected spent and discarded paint from acclaimed international artists such as Marlene Dumas to local house painters where I live. I integrate this paint in works that, to me, are actual landscapes, because the paint was destined for landfill before becoming part of the artwork,”"