Dr Esther Mahlangu (b. 1935, South Africa) is a multi-award-winning visual artist and celebrated cultural ambassador. She is widely considered a visionary and disruptor, being the first person to reimagine Ndebele design in different media. Mahlangu’s works are in notable museum collections including The Smithsonian Museum, Washington D.C.; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Brooklyn Museum, New York and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Los Angeles, among others. In 2018 She was presented with two honorary doctorates from University of Johannesburg and Durban University of Technology and has received two more since then in 2022 from Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) and from University of South Africa (UNISA) in 2024. In 2019 she received the Officer of Arts and Letters award – France’s highest decoration for contribution to the arts. In 2020 the Department of Arts and Culture published a book in her honour and she received an award from the United Nations in Johannesburg in 2019. Since her work was included in the seminal group show Les Magiciens de la Terre in Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris, France in 1989, Mahlangu’s work has been shown in group and solo exhibitions around the world. In 2024 ‘Then I Knew I Knew I Was Good at Painting: Esther Mahlangu, A Retrospective’ was launched at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Her work is included in Foreigners Everywhere, this year’s edition of La Biennale di Venezia, 60th International Art Exhibition. Mahlangu is represented by The Melrose Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa.
