Beauty Ngxongo
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Beauty Ngxongo
| image = Beauty Ngxongo at the 2011 Santa Fe Folk Art Festival 2013-10-16 14-32.jpg
| birth_name = Beauty Batimbele Ngxongo
| birth_date = {{birth year and age|1953}}
| birth_place = KwaZulu-Natal province, South Africa
| occupation = Basket weaver
}}
Beauty Batimbele Ngxongo (born 1953){{Cite web |title=Weaving new solutions / Jannie van Heerden, Chonat Getz, Helene Smuts |url=https://www.si.edu/object/weaving-new-solutions-jannie-van-heerden-chonat-getz-helene-smuts%3Asiris_sil_1054741 |access-date=2022-03-29 |website=Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, Smithsonian Institution |language=en}} is a South African master weaver of Zulu baskets.{{Cite web |last=Chemaly |first=Tracy Lynn |date=July 7, 2021 |title=Beauty Ngxongo: Woven in Time |url=https://tlmagazine.com/beauty-ngxongo-woven-in-time/ |access-date=2022-03-29 |website=TLmagazine |language=en-US}}{{Cite web |date=2020-08-20 |title=The Master: Beauty Ngxongo |url=https://lexuslife.co.za/the-master-beauty-ngxongo/ |access-date=2022-03-29 |website=Lexus Life |language=en-US}} Her baskets have reached international fame.{{Cite book |last=Rosengarten |first=Dale |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HqfYAAAAMAAJ |title=Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art |last2=Rosengarten |first2=Theodore |last3=Schildkrout |first3=Enid |last4=Carney |first4=Judith Ann |date=2008 |publisher=Museum for African Art |others=Museum for African Art (New York, N.Y.), McKissick Museum |isbn=978-0-945802-50-1 |language=en}} She lives in Hlabisa, in the KwaZulu-Natal 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 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 Smithsonian Institution, the Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art,{{Cite web |date=September 24, 2020 |title=Breaking the Frame: Women Artists in the Harn Collections |url=https://harn.ufl.edu/breakingtheframe}} and the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).{{Cite news |last=Strickland |first=Carol |date=2012-12-13 |title=How Basketry Preserved a People |work=Christian Science Monitor |url=https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2012/1213/How-basketry-preserved-a-people |access-date=2022-03-29 |issn=0882-7729}} Additionally, her work is part of the MTN Art Collection, a private, corporate art collection in Johannesburg.{{Cite book |last= |first= |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X8smAQAAIAAJ |title=Messages and Meaning: The MTN Art Collection |date=2006 |publisher=MTN Foundation |isbn=978-0-9584860-6-4 |pages=40–41 |language=en}}
See also
References
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