Education officer Yolanda de Kock explains their #5WomenArtists Campaign hosted in collaboration with the National Museum of Women in Arts, New York, aims to empower female artists. 

The exhibition includes work from renowned South African artists Nomusa Makhubu, Helen Sebidi, Nandipha Mntambo, Penny Siopis and Diane Victor, who were selected in terms of their extraordinary achievements regardless of age, race or background.

“Internationally acclaimed artist, Helen Sebidi, could be seen as one of South Africa’s foremost female artists and unlike some well established artists in the country, her art career started differently as her first teacher of art and aesthetics was her grandmother,” De Kock adds.

“She won the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist award in 1989, an enormous achievement for a black female artist of that time”.

De Kok says Sebidi has an extraordinary exhibition history as she participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Oman, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo, Venice Biennale in Italy, South Africa and London.  

"Her work is also represented in outstanding collections such as the Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town, The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington and New York and the Aboriginal Art Museum in Australia," De Kock concluded.

OFM News