Billie Zangewa
BILLIE ZANGEWA
Born in Blantyre, Malawi in 1973, the artist Billie Zangewa has gained an international following for the intricate collages she creates with fragments of hand-sewn raw silk. Keenly attuned to the complexities of Black identity in women, her visual narratives explore the social politics and gender stereotypes of womanhood through the rituals of domesticity, motherhood, and the intimacies of home life, tropes she refers to as “daily feminism.” For Zangewa, it is these often overlooked, quotidian routines that are the most potent universal themes within the feminine experience. The poignant domestic sanctuary fueled by her unique visual language is one that deploys a tender introspection as it quietly subverts the patriarchal structures within society.
As a child, Zangewa was intrigued by her mother’s sewing group and the emotional support and communal spirit shared among the women. After studying at Rhodes University, she emerged to create small narrative tapestries stitched meticulously by hand. Seeking financial security, Zangewa worked in the fashion industry analyzing textiles, learning marketing, and working as a model. She would become acutely aware of the male gaze, eventually contemplating what form the “female gaze” might take. As her practice evolved, the compositions pivoted from lush foliage, urban parks, and cityscapes to domestic life and its peripheries. When her son was born, home became the epicenter of their world, and she began to construct an identity in which Black figuration found resonance in depictions of interiors, motherhood, and caretaking. Sewing in bed or at her massive kitchen table, tiny scraps of silk are pinned together in a pastiche of shimmering layers that fuse into painterly, hypnotic portraits, interiors, and detailed mises en scène. Implicit in the use of raw silk is the transformation inherent to its creation, a potent example of metamorphosis. Introducing dramatic ruptures into the image field, she slices into the compositions, cutting away broad swaths of negative space that evoke a fragile sense of lost memory. The labyrinthine collages hang loosely on walls inviting their luminous surfaces to slightly billow, as if animated by breath.
Billie Zangewa has had numerous solo exhibitions at venues including SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM; John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK; Brighton CCA, Brighton, UK; Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC; Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA; Lehmann Maupin, London, UK and Seoul, South Korea; Galerie Templon, Paris, France; Afronova Gallery; and Gerard Sekoto Gallery, both in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Her work is represented in several acclaimed public and private collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library, Preston, UK; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, MA; Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa; JP Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Norval Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa; RISD Museum, Providence, RI; Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Tate Modern, London, UK.
She lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Billie Zangewa was filmed on November 28, 2023, at Site Santa Fe, in New Mexico.
“I learned about color through printmaking, as well as through the history of art. But I think that my study of printmaking was important because we literally had four colors to mix together to create all the different nuances. It was exciting to learn about how you can get a cool green, a warm green, a dirty green. So, I think that theoretical aspect of putting together a print was educating me subliminally.”
“There weren’t enough collectors in Botswana to sustain me over an extended period of time so that I could be independent, so I moved to Johannesburg. There, the fact that I had gone to Rhodes University and not Wits University, which is the university in Johannesburg, meant that a lot of doors were closed to me. I got a job working for Diesel selling jeans, and it was a very humbling experience. But that was like my master’s degree because I learned a lot about different cuts of denim. I learned about Diesel’s marketing strategies. I learned about merchandising. I learned about running a business. All of this while selling jeans. So, I did really well actually.”
“After I graduated from university, it was quite a long rocky road with many twists and turns. I moved back to Botswana and lived in my father’s house for a bit... I had no studio space, so I had to keep things quite small. I connected with the local artists, and we would meet at a local gallery called Gallery Ann. And so quite quickly, I got a small community of artists to connect with and I showed my personal drawings there.”
“My dad said, ‘I’m going to educate you and you need to take that opportunity because I don’t want any man to ever exploit you. You must be an independent, strong individual because this life is hard for an African Black woman.’ So, he did give me the tools to be able to navigate this kind of difficult landscape.”
