By Mbali Tanana
Zulu customs and culture themed under Umnikelo were the inspiration behind Rhodes University student Snelihle Asanda Maphumulo’s award-winning artwork in Pretoria last week.
The 22-year-old Fine Art student’s artwork placed her among the Sasol New Signature’s 2024 Merit Award winners who bagged R10 000 at the Pretoria Art Museum.
The renowned art competition, in its 30th year this year, recorded the highest number of entrants, with 1013 submissions from over seven entry points across the country.
Durban-born Maphumulo, who submitted her artwork in Gqeberha, just over 150kms from Rhodes University, said her upbringing as a young Zulu woman attending a lot of traditional ceremonies, influenced the award-winning artwork which comprised an 18-part installation made of beer crates and wax plates, among a variety of mixed media, which tell the story of how Zulu women have the responsibility to serve in their homesteads.
Maphumulo, currently pursuing her Honours in Fine Art, Art History and Visual Art at Rhodes, said coming so far in the prestigious art competition came as a complete surprise to her.
“At the time when I entered the competition, I was just trying my luck, I had no idea that I would surpass over 1000 entrants, let alone make it in the top seven. God is really showing off here and I am so grateful. My work has been inspired by Nandipha Mntambo and I was really excited to have had the opportunity to meet her. I have loved how she has played with different materials and that has also inspired my use of sheep skin. She has inspired the conceptual frameworks towards my work. Her use of cow skin to challenge conventional connections with physical presence, femininity, sexuality, and vulnerability is admirable to me,” she said.
Maphumulo said the inspiration for the body of work is complex in an interesting way because it stems from a place of feeling like an outsider in her own culture.
“The idea of serving in the Zulu culture is highly valued. There was a season in my life where I attended many Zulu ceremonies. I started noticing the amount of endless serving those women did and prioritising the needs of others first. The wax plates stand as a signifier of this endless serving and just the intersectionality of gender. The found materials seen in this body of work stand as signifiers of what one would typically find in Zulu ceremonies,” she said.
In her exhibition, she arranged the crates in such a way that they represent a group of men seated together and feasting, while also representing the excessive amount of beer consumption at these ceremonies, while the women – represented by the wax plates, served them.
Sasol New Signatures National chairperson,, Pfunzo Sidogi, said they were impressed with the quantity and quality of artworks that had been submitted this year.
“Artists are using their creativity to respond to, reflect on, and make artistic sense of the complexities of our world today. Many of the difficult personal and social stories represented in the artworks have been treated with a sensitivity that can be read as an aesthetic of Ubuntu. This year’s exhibition is dominated by works that not only question the family, social, political and economic order but also restore the human element.”
“This is the magic of the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition. It is a platform where emerging artists from across the country can contribute their unique creative visions of the world that ultimately bring people together,” he said.
Maphumulo, along with the other competition finalists and winners, will have their work exhibited at the Pretoria Art Museum from 5 September to 3 November.
