Cocoon
16 Jun 2011 – 30 Sep 2011
Gulbenkian Garden
Free admission
Born in Mababane, Swaziland (1982), Nandipha Mntambo now lives and works in South Africa. Using a wide range of different media – from painting to video – the artist has concentrated in recent years on femininity and its representation and expression based on the female body. Nandipha is interested in the themes that touch upon the strange and magical dimension of the human condition, as evidenced by the representations of the mythical android figures that have served as a subject-matter for her painting and through which she has portrayed herself.
For her, it was but a short step from this two-dimensional representation to sculpture and to the installation – something that endures – and her sculptures made of hides and resin clearly express the attraction she feels for everything animal that bursts forth into everyday life: whether in its dimension of ferocity or allurement. The work that she has created specially for the Next Future programme is a way of combining nature with the idea of welcoming the visitor who finds himself strolling through the garden and inadvertently comes across the Cocoon. In this case, the same visitor will also understand that the body is the measure of all things.