Nandipha Mntambo exhibition in Capetown
The show mixes Mntambo’s new furniture with several oil paintings.

February 22, 2022

Words: Jesse Dorris

Photography: Hayden Phipps/Southern Guild

Nandipha Mntambo’s Furniture Blurs Human and Animal Forms in a New Show at Capetown’s Southern Guild

Until recently, the Eswatini-born and Johannesburg-based artist Nandipha Mntambo was best known for her uncanny cowhide-resin sculptures that explored, and exploded, the boundaries between animal skin and human figuration. “Transcending Instinct,” her first solo show for Cape Town’s Southern Guild gallery, on view through April 8, stretches her expertise into the realm of functional sculpture.

The result is a quartet of haunting seating. The Hypnotic stool reimagines her 2009 sculpture uMcedoas a hump concealed by tassels that pays tribute to the voodoo spirit Zangbeto. A coat she fashioned that same year, adorned with cow ears, inspired the unsettling cocoon chair Love Quest. A chaise, Serenity,invokes black holes and tentacles yet offers a cozy sheepskin seat in which to snuggle. The Pinnacle chair upends expectations entirely, conscripting an overturned Zebra to serve as a strange seat. “I’m using my current practice as a lens to look back,” Mntambo said in a statement. And she’s finding a range of deeply-bodied, provocative meditations on form—that of human beings, of animals, and what lies in-between. 

The Hypnotic rocking stool furthers Mnatmbo’s interested in rounded shapes.
The Hypnotic rocking stool furthers Mntambo’s interested in rounded shapes.
Rows of hanging leather tassels conceal drape across the Hypnotic stool.
Rows of hanging leather tassels conceal drape across the Hypnotic stool.
The concave Love Quest chair is adorned with folded “ears” of cow leather.
The concave Love Quest chair is adorned with folded “ears” of cow leather.
Mntambo worked with Adam Birch to carve Serenity, an oblong chaise of timber.
Mntambo worked with Adam Birch to carve Serenity, an oblong chaise of timber.
Mntambo lined the zebra skin with traditional upholstery springing and foam cushioning.
Mntambo lined the zebra skin with traditional upholstery springing and foam cushioning.
Pinnacle began as a sculpture, which Mntambo then flipped upside down.
Pinnacle began as a sculpture, which Mntambo then flipped upside down.
Tangles of leather explode from the frame of Serenity, concealing and intersecting the user’s body.
Tangles of leather explode from the frame of Serenity, concealing and intersecting the user’s body.
The show mixes Mntambo’s new furniture with several oil paintings.
The show mixes Mntambo’s new furniture with several oil paintings.

read more

recent stories