Many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea

doctor:  alright we have your antibiotics

doctor:  here’s your penicillin

me:  more like

penichillin

doctor:

me:

‘I have been making art all my life because it is in my heart and in my blood. When I paint I am happy. I strived to show people from all over the world my work and to tell them my story as an artist, an Ndebele woman artist, who against all odds travelled the world … I know that long after I am gone, people will still go and see my paintings and they will remember there was an artist called Esther Mahlangu, and she came from South Africa.’ – Esther Mahlangu (born 1935)

In 1991, to mark the end of apartheid, BMW invited Esther Mahlangu to make a work of art in their Art Car project. Her work, with its brightly coloured geometric shapes, draws on the traditional house-painting designs of Ndebele people in South Africa.

Under apartheid the Ndebele were forced to live in ethnically defined rural reserves – their designs are an expression of cultural identity, and can be read as a form of protest against racial segregation and marginalisation.

Mahlangu’s Art Car combines tradition and history with contemporary art and politics, themes that are explored in our exhibition South Africa: the art of a nation (27 October 2016 – 26 February 2017).

Artist Esther Mahlangu (b. 1935) with the BMW Art Car 12, 1991. 

Esther Mahlangu (b. 1935), BMW Art Car 12, 1991. © Esther Mahlangu. Photo © BMW Group Archives.