Nandipha Mntambo’s hauntingly beautiful sculptures made out of cowhide. Video by Diane Frankel

Nandipha Mntambo, born in Swaziland in 1982 and raised in South Africa, is a sculptor who has made cowhide her medium of choice.  Her choice is informed on one hand by a childhood dream where she found herself left with a pile of cowhides and on the other by her interest in science and forensics, which was her first passion before she decided to become an artist.

She makes plaster moulds of her own body and envelops them with the still malleable cowhide that she has thoroughly cleaned and cured.  The hide forms become empty floating receptacles, at once beautiful and repulsive. These hairy feminine shapes defy our notion of feminine beauty. Nandipha Mntambo remembers her early years at girl schools where there was so much focus on getting rid of body hair. With her haunting floating figures, simultaneously human and animal like , she deliberately seeks to provoke a sense of unease.  She describes her use of cowhide “as a means to subvert expected associations with corporeal presence, femininity, sexuality and vulnerability.”  The animal/human association is not new but rarely has it been so provocative. The cowhides seem to be worn as garments caught in movement. As Mntambo explains in the video, the many folds and creases were inspired by the move of the dress worn by a woman dancing the Paso Doble with her partner. Here Mntambo addresses issues of gender, which are also at the core of her work.  She has more recently expanded her work to include video and photography where she explores further associations tied to the cow iconography. Mythology plays an important part and helps position her work in a broader geographical context.

Nandipha Mntambo completed a Master of Fine Arts from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town. She was the 2011 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for visual arts and she has been shown in group shows in the US, Europe, Africa, and Australia.