Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi and “Ntlo E Etsamayang (The Walking House)” | The Remarkable Return of an Archive

On the Baltic Sea, in a Swedish town just south of Stockholm, Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi’s drawings and paintings are brought to feature in the closing exhibition of her month-long residency as part of the “Cultural Work with Developing Countries” programme. She spends the month establishing connections with Swedish artists and sharing her profound wisdom and insight on South African art and politics. However, as her time in Sweden comes to a close, the planned and offered solo exhibition is halted.

 

It is 1991 and with, the promise of the exhibition’s eventual materialisation, Sebidi leaves Sweden and leaves her artworks in the care and custody of the programme’s organisers. There is no further communication from the Swedish team after that - not on the exhibition nor the whereabouts of her artworks. A year later, after her request for their return, all that arrives is a box of beadwork and painted calabashes, and a note informing her that her works had gone missing- possibly stolen.

 

 

Police reports are filed, attempts at further contact with the organisers are made, their last known location is searched but to no avail. The artworks are gone. In the 33 years since, numerous efforts have been made to seek further information on these lost pieces. Ambassadors and researchers embark on retrieval journeys while newspapers and broadcasters sound reports. In 2020, the Swedish government even offers money to reconcile the loss. But the weeks, months and years pass with mourning.

 

It is not until May 2023, 32 years later, that Nyköping Folk High School’s school caretaker, Jesper Osterberg, cleans the back of a neglected closet. Behind Christmas ornaments and dust he finds 28 artworks in their original packaging.

 

It is triumph over adversity, a testament to perseverance, passion and a grief that lasted three decades.

 

 

However, now amongst her lost artworks destined for the 1991 exhibition, showing in Ntlo E Etsamayang (The Walking House) at Everard Read Cape Town (until 31 July), Sebidi tells the story differently: it is, like all that guides her practice, the work of her ancestors.

 

Sebidi will recall the man who reported her work stolen as having been given the job to keep them hidden: “...he will have this job until he is taken, until his fixed time of Earth runs out and when it did, so came the caretaker, and with the caretaker came their return.” She says something else that has remained front of mind since our conversation: “It was a fight for nothing.”

 

It is not to say the efforts to retrieve her work were in vain but rather a reminder of timing - it was not those who went that were meant for the job. To surrender to circumstance is power in itself. While Sebidi grieved, it is that power given to her by her ancestors that brought their return.

 

When asked what inspires her to create, Sebidi refuses to answer. There is no planning or design behind her production; it is only through the words and governance of her ancestors that she is moved to make. She has been gifted with the ability of communication, communication that transcends our physical realm. Her entire practice and artistic journey is a symphony of messages interpreted by movement - trusting that, once realised, their voices will come through. It is a dream after a near fatal accident leaving her hospital-bound that brought about the creation of the lost body of artworks - the message to leave the bed at once given by a lady adorned with red roses and black leaves. Throughout the sleepless nights that followed, Sebidi let the messages of her ancestors pour out of her onto canvas and paper.

 

 

It is hard to describe what talking to Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi is truly like. To hear her speak is to hear centuries of wisdom speak through her - if ever the sceptic, spend an hour in her company. In Sebidi’s work, there is decadence that cannot (or will not) be understood by those who do not feel their spirits. It is not for her, or you and I, to question.

 

 

Diwairi (Wire) Lehora (Fence) Enita Mokwape-Sebidi (grandmother of Mmakgabo Sebidi)

 

Bio:

 

Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi (b. 1943) was born in Marapyane, in what is now Mpumalanga. As her mother was working in the city for much of her childhood, she grew up with her grandmother, who taught her the values that would guide and sustain her life. This includes the channelling of spirit back into the world through hard work, the commitment of the self to the community, but most of all through acts of creativity. Sebidi trained in a number of informal art institutions in Johannesburg. While working at the Johannesburg Art Foundation under the tutelage of David Koloane and Bill Ainslie, Sebidi made her first semi-abstract work, a frenzied, visionary work produced in a marathon of painting that terrified the artist and prompted Ainslie to describe it as her ‘miracle’. Sebidi has participated in many group and solo shows. She won the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award in 1989, the year after she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to travel to the USA. She was awarded the Vita Art Award in 1990, and the Silver Award of the Order of Ikhamanga in 2004. Her work is in many private and public collections in South Africa and abroad, including Iziko South African National Gallery; the Johannesburg Art Gallery; and the Smithsonian Institute.