Everyday is a fresh start!
This was my favorite work from the Billie Zangewa exhibition, Wings of Change, at Lehmann Maupin Gallery back in November of 2020. Everyone was desperately looking for a fresh start that year, eight months after quarantine.
Getting out of the house and seeing art was part of that fresh start for me. When I found out that Zangewa was showing at the Lehman Maupin gallery, I ran to the train and rode it all the way downtown (W. 24th street, to be exact).
About the work
In A Fresh Start, Zangewa, a fabric artist, literally clothes the figure with silk simultaneously revealing and shrouding her in an elegant game of peek-a-boo. The water from the shower-head triangulates the woman both protecting and containing her while also creating a spotlight. Everything is bathed in light, the fabric’s luminosity demands it. Even the pipes sparkle elevating this mundane pass time. She is not only renewed, but redeemed, baptized into a new day, a fresh start.
Reflection
I don’t know if I would use this particular piece to teach from as she is in the nude (it would require a very mature audience) but it spoke so deeply to me; does anyone else see the nozzle on the shower as if it were a little angel pouring water as the figure’s hands washes the weight of the world from her face? Yeah, I’ll keep this work just for me…and you, lol. How about you? What does a fresh start look like to you? How might you show it with art materials?
Feel free to tag me with your response on my Instagram, @Nelarte
About the Artist
Billie Zangewa was born in Blantyre, Malawi but lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. She creates intricate collages composed of hand-stitched fragments of raw silk. These figurative compositions explore contemporary identity in an attempt to challenge the historical stereotype, objectification, and exploitation, of the black female form.
Other Resources about Billie Zangewa and her work
Following are links to resources about her work, I will definitely write more about her other works again:
https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/artist-profile-billie-zangewa.html