Beauty Batimbele Ngxongo (born 1953) is a South African master weaver of Zulu baskets. Her baskets have reached international fame. She lives in

Hlabisa Hlabisa is a settlement in Umkhanyakude District Municipality in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The village lies between the Hluhluwe and Umfolozi game reserves, some 40 km north-west of Mtubatuba. Named after the Hlabisa tribe ...

, in the

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...

province of South Africa.

Biography

Ngxongo wove doormats and table mats in her childhood. In the 1990s, a neighbor taught Ngxongo how to make intricate basket designs using local natural products (like grasses and

Ilala palm Ilala may refer to: * Ilala, a village in Simret municipality, Ethiopia * Ilala District in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania * Ilala River near Mekelle, Ethiopia * Ilala (Iringa Urban ward), an administrative ward in the Iringa Urban district of Tanzania * ...

leaves). A single Zulu basket that holds water take months to complete. By 2012, she employed 13 women to help her workshop. Finding buyers can be difficult as plastic containers are so easily available. However, she has collaborated with two contemporary designers to create what they call the Hlabisa Bench. The bench's shape channels the profiles of the hills of Hlabisa, the village where Ngxongo and her fellow workers live. Her work can be found in museum collections including at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, the

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, the

Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art The Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art is an art museum at the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. It is in the UF Cultural Plaza area in the southwest part of campus. The Harn is a 112,800-square-foot-facility, making it one of the largest u ...

, and the

Fowler Museum The Fowler Museum at UCLA, commonly known as The Fowler, and formerly Museum of Cultural History and Fowler Museum of Cultural History, is a museum on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) which explores art and material ...

at the

University of California, Los Angeles The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

(UCLA). Additionally, her work is part of the MTN Art Collection, a private, corporate art collection in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demo ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ngxongo, Beauty Living people 1953 births Basket weavers People from KwaZulu-Natal Women basketweavers South African women artists

Biography

See also

References