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ART SUITE

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HERE, THERE & FORWARD

The Mask

Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi

born 1943

Artwork Details

Artist          Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi 
Title            The Mask
Year            1995
Medium      Mixed Media and oil on canvas (169 x 99cm)

About the Artist

Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmangankato Helen Sebidi (born 1943) is a South African artist born in Marapyane near Hammanskraal and based in Johannesburg. Her grandmother introduced her to mural painting, beadwork, embroidery and decorated calabashes. Sebidi studied painting at John Koenakeefe Mohl’s White Studio in Sophiatown from 1970 to 1973 and later worked at the Johannesburg Art Foundation under artists including Bill Ainslie and David Koloane. She received a Fulbright Scholarship, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1989, the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver in 2004, the ACT Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, and the Mbokodo Award in 2015.

About this Artwork

The Mask is a powerful example of Sebidi's exploration of identity, spirituality and transformation. The composition brings together human and symbolic forms in a manner that is characteristic of Sebidi's visual language, where figures are rarely fixed or singular but instead shift between physical and spiritual states. The mask can be understood as a metaphor for the many identities people carry throughout their lives, as well as the relationship between the visible and unseen worlds that frequently appears in her work.