Artist Database

Billie Zangewa is a South African-Malawian artist currently working in Johannesburg. Zangewa constructs detailed silk tapestries, layering subtle socio-politics with storytelling. Her practice involves overlaying and hand-stitching fragments of raw silk to create her intricate and iconic collages. Within scenes both mundane and intimate, she expresses the lived experience of black women in what she calls ‘daily feminism’. Zangewa’s work is emotive, using portraiture, domestic interiors and urban landscapes to portray the experiences both personal and universal.

Zangewa began working with cityscapes when she moved to Johannesburg, and these pieces explored her changing environment and experiences of the male gaze. She first had the idea to start working with silk while shopping with an interior designer friend. She discovered the glorious sheen and texture of the raw dupion silk and collected swatches to work with. The fabric swatches she took home reminded her of the windows of the high-rise CBD buildings and inspired her first cityscape work. Silk, as a fabric, also represents transformation, a material made from cocoons, connecting ideas of growth and progress evoked in the artist’s work. Zangewa’s delicate and intricate work has garnered international attention and representation, including a commission to create a posthumous portrait of Christian Dior, The Dior Effect (2021).