Leading figure in African visual arts and personality with a great charisma, Esther Mahlangu is the author of a group of works – paintings and sculptures- which leads into the MAGI the flavor and vitality of ancient roots combined with a language of immediate impact. Protagonist of the Malindi Biennale since its first edition, friend of Nelson Mandela and symbol figure in the social and cultural redemption of black women, she is one of the few African artists whose works have been exhibited in the most important museums around the world.
Her expressive language comes from the tradition of decorating the houses on particular ritual occasions, which is still transmitted from one generation to the next by women of the villages of the Ndebele people, to which she belongs. Her paintings are characterized by the presence of repeated geometric shapes bound by a thin black border and from the combination of them sometimes stylized figures and object emerge, enhanced by vibrant monochrome-filled backgrounds. Her sculptures resonate the fetishes and the magical- propitiatory handcraft productions.
Chosen by FIFA as official artist of the World Cup in South Africa in 2010, for which she created the coordinated image, in the same year she was at MAGI to inaugurate the room dedicated to her.
