Lehmann Maupin is pleased to announce Flesh and Blood and Running Water, two concurrent exhibitions featuring new work by Johannesburg-based artist Billie Zangewa, which will be presented across the gallery’s Seoul and London locations. Best known for her intricate collages composed of hand-stitched fragments of raw silk, Zangewa creates figurative compositions that explore identity and challenge the historical stereotype, objectification, and exploitation of the black female form. For her second presentation with the gallery, Zangewa has created two bodies of work inspired by a new-found appreciation for family, labor, and ritual that resulted from living and working in isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. Flesh and Blood features work focused on the artist’s close community of family and friends, while Running Water examines the day-to-day acts of work, parenting, and self-care. The exhibition titles are inspired by lyrics from the Neville Brothers’ song Sons and Daughters (1990), which the artist heard on Radio Nova, a French radio station based in Paris.

Beginning her career in the fashion and advertising industries, Zangewa employs her understanding of textiles to portray personal and universal experiences through domestic interiors, urban landscapes, and portraiture. Her earliest works were embroideries on found fabrics depicting remembered botanical scenes and animals from Botswana, but she soon transitioned to creating cityscapes, focusing on her personal relationships and experience as a woman in the city of Johannesburg. After the birth of her son, Zangewa began creating her well-known domestic interiors to explore her shift in focus from self-examination and femininity to motherhood and the home. Often referencing scenes or experiences from everyday life, Zangewa has stated that she is interested in depicting the work done by women that keeps society running smoothly but which is often overlooked, undervalued, or ignored.