The Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art 2011 has been awarded to Nandipha Mntambo. Her exhibition, “Faena”, comes to the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum directly from the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.
The 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for Visual Art graduated with a Masters of Fine Art (with distinction) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town in 2007, and is currently studying in Cleveland, Ohio.
“Winning the Standard Bank Young Artist Award is wonderful. At this stage of my career it is a great affirmation of my achievements within my art practice,” said Mntambo. “My hope is that the scope of my art creation would be increased.”
For 28-year old Nandipha Mntambo cowhide is the primary canvas used to express her passion to challenge societal and cultural norms. Mntambo used the process of cleaning, stretching and then manipulating this difficult material into human-like figures to challenge societal and cultural norms associated with animals skins. Her fragmented animal hide figures float delicately from strings suspended from the ceiling and appear to be a halfway point between female/male, animal/human and alive/dead.
“My intention is to explore the physical and tactile properties of hide and aspects of control that allow or prevent me from manipulating this material in the context of the female body and contemporary art,” Mntambo explains in a catalogue statement for her solo exhibition Ingabisa at Michael Stevenson in 2007. “I have used cowhide as a means to subvert expected associations with corporeal presence, femininity, sexuality and vulnerability.”
In recent work, Mntambo has shifted her focus to the art of bullfighting and her medium to video and photography. The title of Mntambo’s award exhibition “Faena” refers to the series of final passes performed by a matador preparatory to killing a bull in a bullfight.
The exhibition will be opening on Wednesday 27 July 2011 at 17:30 for 18:00. All members of the public are invited to attend. For more information, please telephone the Art Museum on 041 506 2000.
Those who did not manage to view the exhibition in Grahamstown should not miss out on this opportunity to view Mntambo’s mastery of cowhide as a material.
The exhibition will be on show until 4 September 2011.
Alan Straton
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