Nandipha Mntambo was born in 1982 in Mbabane, Swaziland, and now lives in Johannesburg. She graduated with a Master’s in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2007.
She makes cascading sculptures that are molded from cowhide and suggest the human figure. These three-dimensional works, along with her photographs, videos, and performances, explore the similarities and differences between humans and animals, men and women, and attraction and repulsion. “I’m interested in uncovering that binary—that in-between space that you can’t always pinpoint or articulate,” Mntambo has said. A recent photograph series, titled “everyone carries a shadow,” explores the ambiguity of androgyny.