We reached out to artists whose work we admire and asked them about their artistic journeys, current projects and the ideas that drive their practice.
In this series, we spotlight the unique approaches of contemporary artists, offering them a platform to share insights into their artistic process, ongoing work, and the parameters that define their practice.
Born in 1995 on a serendipitous Saturday, Mbete is a creative practitioner with a multicultural heritage. She is based in liminal spaces. Bulumko Mbete undertakes research in different forms of craft and design methodologies which are predominantly performed by women in Southern Africa. Her current research focuses on this form of craft and design as indigenous knowledge systems and archives. Her work is influenced by this mode of storytelling and production. She creates a framework to communicate generational traditions and gestures of love using textile, beading, natural dyeing and weaving. Furthermore, she explores the geographic connections and synchronicities of South African history alongside our contemporary realities.
Mbete completed her BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She is the 2023 recipient of the ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, and the Cassirer Welz Award, 2023 and a Creative Knowledge Resources (UCT) Fellow, in 2023. Currently, Bulumko is a second-year MFA candidate at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. She is the recipient of the Regina and Marlin Miller Award.
1. You use non-conventional material in your artmaking —onion skin dye and beads on silk, imphepho, Manjistha powder. How have your choices of materials evolved over time, and what is the significance behind these materials?
The major shifts have been the use of particular textiles. There has recently been more variation in what textiles I use and apply my techniques of beading, weaving and dyeing to. The materials speak to different histories and lineages of either material dyeing techniques or utilitarian and medicinal use of certain plants. Everything works together to conjure a memory, divination or a resonance with material culture.
2. Can you make the connection between what you term “generational gestures of love” and your process?
My process of making is inspired and influenced by the ways in which my family members, specifically women, have gestured or shown love through constructing textile objects for loved ones to use for clothing, comfort or warmth. This has recently become increasingly more abstract in my practice. But this is the origin story that led to an interest in weaving, knitting, textile production processes (e.g. dyeing) and handwork like beading.
3. Can you share more about how you view textiles and clothes as archival matter, and how they function as both personal and collective memory in your work?
Textiles and clothes can be mechanisms for self-determination. We often tell stories about ourselves and to each other through the clothes we wear; or using textile objects that we gift and present to each other. In ceremonies of marriage ( Umembeso, Utsiki, Kgoroso), baptism, confirmations, mourning, ukuthwasa etc relationships become tethered between people through dress or gifted textile items. Family members are active in making these objects markers of familial history or traditions. These then become part of broader social practices in society and feed into popular culture and regional traditions. The textiles contain symbols and emblems that can be read within coded contexts. This coding, reading and symbolic index creates its own archive and memory for us.
4. I think that in recent years, there has been a considerable shift in your visual language. Would you agree? Can you speak more about this and what types of experiments you are busy with at the moment?
Definitely, I am in a constant state of exploration and expansion within my practice. My visual language has varied a lot since my undergraduate studies. The world is a big place and so many stories are available to be told in different iterations. I’m exploring different contexts and what my conversation with those contexts may be. I’ve finally been through professional dyeing classes and have learnt new methods and applications that I’ll carry into the future of my practice. I’m also expanding my visual language into a more coherent form of installation art. I’ll be introducing more sculptural elements into my work using ceramics and found materials.
5. Philosophically, conceptually, or otherwise, what do you believe art is for?
I believe that art can provide transformative experiences or reflections on life. It can visualise, symbolise, synthesise and provide infinite possibilities for the human experience with our environment and the beings that exist within it.
