n July 2001, the Evergreen State College, Tacoma, brought three painters from Mpumalanga, South Africa, to paint the walls of their new campus building. The idea was to incorporate community symbols into the traditional style of painting. (See the full story at their website.) While they were in Washington State, the Seattle Art Museum invited them to spend a weekend painting a wall in the African art galleries.
A recent "tradition"
Ndebele wallpainting is interesting because it is an example of a "tradition" that has been created only in the last 60 or so years, but so successfully that its style is instantly recognizable, and as such it has become a dominant marker of a people's identity.
The symbol as history
The reaction of the Ndebele people to the world around them shows in the symbols that are incorporated into the paintings. Their change over time represents an artistic history. The most clearly represented symbols, that still form the basis of the paintings, are those of buildings themselves, initially expressing the material desires of a downtrodden society. Traffic lights, church steeples, airplanes, and other forms were later incorporated. During the resistance to apartheid, the ANC colors and logo often appeared. Today, advertising logos and symbols of commercialization are found.
Carol Hermer
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Photographs by Mark Lewis from
Ndebele - A People & their Art
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