Billie Zangewa

She was born in 1973 in Blantyre, Malawi, and graduated in Fine Arts from Rhodes University, South Africa. Her mother worked in the textiles industry on sewing and embroidery. In her artistic training, she tested several modes of expression, but finally became passionate about the work of silk, both because of the interest in the fabrics, the luminosity and the effects of reflection of it. She indicated that: "Silk has a fabulous quality of reflection but at the same time, I think it is very modern and at the forefront of fashion".[1]

Working in Gaborone, Botswana, then Johannesburg but also in London, she sought to translate a feminine perspective on her urban environment. She talked about her interest in fashion photography and the narrative approach, for example, of Ellen von Unwerth in her works. Her work has resulted in the production of handbags, using scenes taken from the city of Johannesburg. Also, she has produced collages, using, on the surface of the fabric, text, images, with a pop art influence.and, sometimes, effects including embroidery, beads and mats.[2][3]

In 2020, Templon in Paris presented a solo exhibition of work by the artist, titled Soldier of Love, which explored the themes of domesticity, femininity, and love. Speaking with Jareh Das in Ocula Magazine, the artist explained, 'I feel that at present, we live in a time blighted by a lot of violence and transgression in different forms that we inflict on one other as a society. We hear about it on the news every day. I believe that it is because we do not prioritise love, and that if we did, most of the suffering in the world would come to an end and we would find healing.'[4]

Zangewa's 2014 work Constant Gardener is owned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in Washington, D C.[5] The textured printing paper awakened her interest in the materiality of surfaces, and when she moved to J ohannesburg she found her muse: the city. She uses self-referentiality as a conceptual framework within which to epitomize the contemporary African woman and contribute to her redefinition in societies in which patriarchy and reactionary views continue to work against the liberation of women. Although her tapestries are autobiographical, she finds recourse in the shaping of a collective identity, as in Midnight Aura and Angelina Rising-titles that reference the names given to wax prints by the Dutch fabric company Vlisco. The African woman depicted in Zangewa's tapestries, who has "experienced modernity" in the words of Yinka Shonibare MBE, has had to reclaim herself: passive and subjected to the desires of men, she has become the agent of seduction performed as a conscious and voluntary act.[6]

In 2018 Zangewa was the featured artist for the annual FNB JoburgArtFair.[7] In 2019 Zangewa was included in the show I Am… Contemporary Women Artists of Africa at the National Museum of African Art.[8]

Zangewa is included in the book Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art ( Phaidon, 2019), ISBN 0714876615.[9]

• https://billiezangewa.com/
• video - FNB JoburgArtFair Conversations: Billie Zangewa, 2018 Featured Artist
• Images of Zangewa's art on Afronova