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South African, 20th–21st century, male.

Active in France.

Born 11 August 1962, in Johannesburg.

Printmaker, choreographer, performance artist. Identity politics.

Living Art.

Steven Cohen was the first South African artist under apartheid to create confrontational performance art engaging with sexual and cultural identity. He began his career in the 1980s, while conscripted into the South African army, when he went absent without leave and learnt how to screenprint at Cape Town’s Ruth Prowse School of Art....

South African, 21st century, collective of mostly women.

Needlework, painting, printmaking, ceramics. Local histories and scenes.

Established in 2000 by Carol Hofmeyr, an artist and medical doctor, the Keiskamma Art Project is intended to provide income-generating opportunities to isiXhosa-speakers in Hamburg and the surrounding villages of Bodium and Ntilini in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, while also enabling participants to use representation to engage with issues of relevance to their communities. Although members sometimes work individually on small-scale embroideries, items in felt, beaded objects, small prints, or ceramics, the project is best known for large-scale works in needlework, which its members work on collectively and which are parodies of well-known art objects from the West....

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active in Germany.

Born 1950, in Pedakondji.

Painter, sculptor, engraver. Murals.

El Loko trained at first as a textile designer in Accra from 1965 to 1968, and then in graphic arts at Düsseldorf's Staatliche Kunstakademie alongside Beuys, Crummenauer and Heerich. He lived and worked in Duisburg in Germany and in Pedakondji in Togo....

South African, late 20th–21st century, collective of women.

Winterveld, South Africa.

Embroidered panels, cushion covers, and bags. Media stories and local scenes.

Mapula (meaning ‘mother of rain’ in Tsonga) is a self-help embroidery project in the Winterveld, a peri-urban area about 40 kilometres north-west of Pretoria in South Africa. Operating in a classroom in the DWT Nthathe Adult Education Centre run by the Sisters of Mercy, it is supported by the women’s organisation Soroptomists International. In ...

South African, 20th century, female.

Born 10 December 1939, at Ekuhlengeni Mission, near Vryheid, Natal (KwaZulu-Natal).

Weaver.

Allina Ndebele grew up at Ekuhlengeni Mission near Vryheid, in the Zulu heartland of what is now KwaZulu-Natal. She attended various mission schools in the region, finishing at Maria Ratchitz in ...

South African, 20th century, male.

Born 1943, in Hlabisa area, Natal (KwaZulu-Natal); died 2007.

Basketweaver.

Reuben Ndwandwe lived in the Hlabisa area of KwaZulu-Natal. He was taught to weave at the Mahashini Primary School under the apartheid regime, when such crafts were compulsory for black students. In pre-industrial South Africa, most basket weaving was done by men. By the early 20th century, due to the migrant labour system and the availability of plastic and metal containers, this activity had all but died out. In the 1950s, missionary organisations supported a revival of the craft in KwaZulu-Natal as a means to economic upliftment, especially for women. Ndwandwe was encouraged to pursue basket weaving during a long convalescence in hospital. He was one of the few men pursuing the craft in the second half of the 20th century and was renowned for his immaculately woven lidded baskets with intricate over-weaving and subtle colours....