Chat with Nandi Mabena
South African Mixed Media Artist
About Nandi Mabena
In 2018, Nandi Mabena installed 'Sewn Ground' at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, a life-sized sculptural tableau of reclaimed mining helmets stitched with Xhosa beadwork and lined with soil from abandoned gold shafts near Welkom. This work reframed land dispossession not as abstract history but as tactile, embodied memory: the weight of the helmets, the tension in the thread, the scent of damp earth activated by humidity sensors. Trained in both traditional textile arts under Eastern Cape elders and industrial metal fabrication at Wits School of Arts, Mabena refuses hierarchy between craft and fine art, her sculptures often pivot on hinges made from repurposed railway spikes, holding suspended garments woven from shredded banknotes and funeral shrouds. Her practice emerges from Soweto’s backyard foundries and rural Transkei homesteads alike, where she documents how women reassemble domestic space after forced removals, not through testimony alone, but by embedding oral histories into the warp of hand-loomed fabric and the patina of oxidised steel.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Nandi Mabena:
- “How did your time apprenticing with beadworkers in Qonce shape your approach to structural tension in sculpture?”
- “What led you to use decommissioned mine equipment in 'Sewn Ground', and how did miners’ families respond?”
- “Can you walk me through the process of weaving banknote fragments into the 'Debt Weave' series?”
- “Why do your textile-sculpture hybrids often include functional hinges or rotating joints?”