Image: Within Silence II by Zandile Tshabalala
“The work is meant to evoke confidence in oneself, a sense of pride and ownership in one’s body and to embrace one’s sexual nature”
Zandile Tshabalala is fine arts student and practising artist from Soweto, South Africa whose work challenges harmful and objectifying representations of sexual Black women and their bodies. By portraying Black female bodies as both motherly and sexual, Tshabalala’s Mother/Cow series gives audiences the agency to explore their own sexualities through a wider lens. In an interview with POSTSCRIPT, Tshabalala discusses her inspiration for the series and her work to redefine Black women as confident owners of their sexual experience.
Cow/Mother: Golden II by Zandile Tshabalala
Tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
My name is Zandile Tshabalala, a 21-year-old Fine art student who is also a practicing artist. I was born and raised in Soweto and currently reside in the city of Johannesburg where I also do my work.
Have you always had an interest in art or was there something in particular that drew you to painting?
Art has always been part of my life from a young age in very minor ways, I always enjoyed drawing and was creative in school. I only learned about fine art in high school when I studied visual arts and during that period that’s when my desire to study art even further and hopefully turn this love into a career developed. Before being introduced to various mediums within the arts, I had already decided that painting was what I was fondest of and even after learning about other forms of art I was still mostly drawn to painting. So that was the conclusion, I wanted to be a painter.
“I believe that more images showing black women as they are, which is confident, strong but also soft and introspective beings, is always going to be needed and is why the works that I do are important.”
From where do you draw inspiration and who or what are your influences?
When I began attempting to find my way of working I was sure of the topics I wished to speak of which were mostly linked to representation, desire, an imagined landscape and rest but I struggled quite a bit in translating these thoughts into tangible visuals. So naturally, I went through some changes in my work (I still am). I started studying other artists that I liked and felt were succeeding in translating what I wanted to say and some of which I just enjoyed their works. These artists include Kerry James Marshall, Henri Rousseau, Cinga Samson and Njideka Akunyili Crosby and I would say that I am heavily influenced by these artists. I always return to their works for guidance and try to keep up with their practice by listening to their lectures, life stories and just having them as my virtual mentors.
I’m particularly drawn to the use of colour and animal print throughout your work, how did you develop that style and aesthetic?
I’d say a bit of trial and error in my work has been handy in my development. I think it is a matter of working with what you like and think makes sense for your works and letting go of what does not. That is how I began working with prints and using the colors that I use, it makes sense for my works.
Portrait I by Zandile Tshabalala
I’m really interested in the depiction of black women in your paintings - relaxed yet still confident, bold, confrontational. When considering the representation of black women in paintings historically or even the general lack of centring black women’s stories in the mainstream, why is this portrayal an important theme in your work?
I think you have spoken of my thoughts in your question: it is the lack that has led me to create these works. Not to say that my works are the only ones of their kind who attempt to address this issue of representing black women in a different way other than the one that shows them as inferior. I believe that more images showing black women as they are, which is confident, strong but also soft and introspective beings, is always going to be needed and is why the works that I do are important. They attempt to show a different story which is to be hopefully taken even further in the future by other artists and inspire whoever is seeing them to be confident within themselves and understand that their existence, feelings and thoughts are valid.
“As an artist who is black and who is a woman I would definitely say that my existence and the existence of my work is radical and is a protest in itself.”
What inspired the creation of your Mother/Cow series and how did you come up with the name?
The use of the term and how I’d often hear or witness how it was associated with women. The term has been used to degrade women – for instance, phrases like “oh she’s such a cow”. For me thinking about the actual animal and how it is seen as of value, importance and for its motherly qualities, the usage of the term as something negative did not make sense and thus I created the series Mother/Cow as a way of overturning this negative and using it as empowerment to women. The title is a direct reference to the nature of the animal and of women as motherly people.
Two Reclining Women, 2020 by Zandile Tshabalala
In a world that has rarely celebrated the black female body as a point of desire, fantasy and sensuality (in a manner that still maintains black women’s agency and humanity), how do you feel that this series empowers black women to take pride in their bodies and the expression of their sexuality?
The work is meant to evoke confidence in oneself, a sense of pride and ownership in one’s body and to embrace one’s sexual nature without being explicit or giving room for objectification through the [male] gaze. The figures are confrontational in their gaze but still very much within themselves. I hope any woman who sees the work adopts these traits and takes pride in themselves without feeling the need to shrink themselves for the other.
As a black female artist, do you feel a sense of responsibility to use your work to speak on social issues or act as a form of protest against a world that others you because of your gender and race?
As a woman I think the responsibility to speak on social issues will always be present whether I wish to partake in it or not as these are issues that have a direct impact on me and other women and affect the way in which we move and are seen in the world. As an artist who is black and who is a woman I would definitely say that my existence and the existence of my work is radical and is a protest in itself.