A young artist who spent her formative years in the Eastern Cape uses lace in her mixed-media pieces to shift the narrative of how black women are depicted in art.
Also known as The Lace Lady, Buqaqawuli Nobakada, 24, whose debut solo exhibition is up in Cape Town, says her early years in the rural Eastern Cape informed the way she approached her work.
“I lived in the Eastern Cape in the very early parts of my life. First in Cumakala and then in a small town called Tarkastad, before coming to do primary school in Johannesburg because my mom moved here to be a teacher.
“A lot of my family is still in the Eastern Cape, so during the holidays, across the years, we have been coming back and spending time here, so it’s still central to my world view.”
Nobakada was raised by a single mother who taught mathematics and expected her academically gifted daughter to study medicine or architecture.
And so when she decided it was art she wanted to pursue, telling her mother was a hard sell.
“I remember telling her about these artists who are able to travel and sustain themselves through art but the biggest problem with everything I was saying is that at the time, the artists I could think of who lead lives my mom would be comfortable with seeing her daughter living, were men.
“The women I could think of like Mary Sibande and Zanele Muholi weren’t visible to the everyday person.
“All of them were people that were only known by the art community but not a regular single mother in her little home in Rosettenville.
“After this, I made a promise to myself that I would become a woman artist that other young girls whose hearts lie in the arts can reference and count on when proving to themselves and their various support systems and caregivers that this journey will not be a mistake.
“My ambition shifted from just being an artist to being a household name.
“My heart breaks when I consider the number of artists, particularly women, that the black community loses because there aren’t enough success stories for families to support their aspiring young artists.”
Now living in Johannesburg where she creates her pieces in a studio in the city’s industrial area, Nobakada is looking forward to two more solo exhibitions — one in Lagos, Nigeria, which opens on March 30, and the other in the US.
Weekender asked her:
Q: What inspired you to use lace in your pieces?
A: My mother’s and grandmother’s houses had lace curtains and doilies. At my mother’s home in Rosettenville, the couches were really old and we didn’t really have much, so lace doilies were often used to cover the tears on the sofa and make them look beautiful, though they were tired underneath.
The washing and cleaning of these doilies and curtains was always the job of the women in the house and I never really paid special attention to this chore until lockdown.
At this stage, I had switched degrees to fine art at Wits but because we were working remotely, our assignments had to be based on found objects.
There was an old lace curtain being thrown out at home and I thought it was perfect to use for an assignment I had at the time.
Little did I know, a very lengthy love story would begin. I loved that there were different kinds of lace with different patterns — some were stretchy and sensual and some were thick and rigid.
It also felt like I was collaborating with the unnamed women that made the lace or developed the art to begin with that didn’t have the luxury of being named.
Q: Where do you source the lace? Do you use lace curtain netting or antique table cloths or dress trims?
A: I’m always on the lookout for different kinds. I usually buy it from fabric stores.
A lot of it is bridal, which is a deeply feminine moment. I make it a point to look out for different lace, especially when I travel because there are different patterns to discover, it’s like they are all different artworks that I get to collaborate with.
It’s a very versatile material, I’ve made sculptures with it and painted on top of it. I’ve collaborated with people that have used it to make dresses that I then paint on afterwards.
I really enjoy experimenting and playing with it because it can exist in a lot of various ways. It’s also something so specific to women — it’s beautiful and not practical because it covers and reveals at the same time.
Q: You speak about black hyperfemininity — please tell us about this concept and how your work speaks to it.
A: Lace is a fitting metaphor for my ideas around beauty, femininity, and craftsmanship. The art of lacemaking was a slow, deliberate process practised by women, yet those women were never considered artists.
Today, lace is machine-produced, yet its feminine origins compel me to work with it, creating a dialogue with the unnamed women who shaped its legacy.
Lace’s fragility mirrors how black women — especially African black women — should be regarded: with care and tenderness. Too often, representations of African women emphasise endurance and trauma.
I’ve seen countless images of women carrying burdens, whether literal or figurative. Coming from a rural area, I’ve seen how violent strength and poverty is in real life, so I don’t want to make art that glamorises it or normalises it for the portrayed or the people looking at that work.
In contemporary contexts, black women are frequently objectified. These portrayals influence how black women are treated daily in real life.
My art seeks to affirm the grace and care that black women both deserve and inherently embody. This extends into my creative process.
Lace is delicate, it tears easily and demands careful handling. In working with it, I practise the tenderness I wish to see reflected in the world’s perception of black women.
Q: You reference the old masters and how they represented women in their art.
A: The female body has been the subject of masterpieces across centuries, but all of these were painted by men.
Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and Édouard Manet’s Olympia are two famous examples of classic masterpieces by men depicting women in undignified and objectifying ways.
Even when a woman is in the nude, her body is still hers, and it’s a heavy narrative to undo. But we must start somewhere and my paintings are my starting point.
Q: How did your years in Cumakala impact your aesthetic and outlook?
A: Through my own life’s journey I’ve seen my life imitate my paintings and it had a lot to do with the way I see myself.
I spent a portion of the early parts of my life in the rural parts of the Eastern Cape and then moved to Johannesburg at the beginning of my art career and for a long time I based my dreams on where I could physically see myself.
Even when I speak to my cousins or other women whose lives are limited to the Eastern Cape, I can see how sometimes they don’t dream too far because they don’t see abundance around them. They believe what is around them is all they are limited to.
I enjoyed disciplines such as architecture but because the white picket fence families in the architecture and home design magazines didn’t look like me, I didn’t consider that life for myself.
Art has taken me to places I never thought I’d go and the more my belief that I belonged in abundance grew, the more abundant my life became in reality.
The purpose of my work is to make abundance a home for contemporary black womanhood. It’s an instruction to dare to dream.
Q: Tell us about your current solo exhibition.
A: I have a solo exhibition in Cape Town with a gallery owned by a brilliant Xhosa woman named Anelisa Mangcu, it’s called Under The Aegis, at 17 Jamieson Street in Gardens. The show is titled: Sondela Nontombi — Because I’ve Seen Your Future and I Think You Should See it Too.
It’s a collective manifestation of an abundant future for women that come from where I come from.
I’ve worked hard to display a commitment to craft and assert that I’m an artist and this is not a hobby, a lot of people dismiss things like art as a hobby, so they aren’t taken seriously in a professional capacity.
I studied art and got my honours degree at Wits. I saved up for a studio so I can document my process and host gallerists and collectors, and have been building and developing my body of work over years, alongside rigorous research.
It feels as though it’s happening to me at a young age, but I’ve been working on my craft since I left high school.
Q: Is it possible to make a living as an artist in SA and do you have any advice for young people looking to make a career of their talent?
A: Yes, it is possible but it requires the commitment that any other job requires. It requires the same admin, networking and technical development required for any job.
Q: Do you have any exciting plans in the pipeline and what is your long-term goal in this industry?
A: I have another solo exhibition opening in Nigeria on March 30 and a solo museum exhibition in May in Albany, Georgia, in the US, so that’s quite exciting for me.
At this stage my main aim is to really enter the global art market and work with more and more galleries overseas, but I’m keeping an open mind.
Weekender
