This work was inspired by an article written by Akindare Okunola: “A lifetime of discrimination, girls gender African child policy forum report". One among many overlooked issues while we overconsumed the reports aired on social media. The second COVID-19 lockdown inSouth Africa had me contemplating the issues of young women forced into arranged marriages, the practice of FGM (female genital mutilation), women deprived of childhood, deprived of better education, and even of their dreams and aspirations. With gender-based violence being so rife in South Africa, alcohol was banned during the lockdown, and the domestic objects on the right of the artwork form my response to gender-based violence: the political cleansing.
Mulanga says “the focus of my art is on the representation of black female subjects. Through their depiction, I engage in different personas, emotions, or states of mind. I juxtapose several different women in my paintings, thereby highlighting the complexities of female identity, the stream of varying consciousnesses that occupy a single space, identity or moment in time.“
