Thandi Sibisi: the new face of South African visual arts

Boost for black artists as 25-year-old daughter of farmers from Zulu heartland opens her own Johannesburg gallery
(via Thandi Sibisi: the new face of South African visual arts | Art and design | guardian.co.uk)

David Smith in Johannesburg
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 16 February 2012 16.27 GMT

Thandi Sibisi, a daughter of farmers in the Zulu heartland, remembers arriving in the big city for the first time. “The bus dropped me in Gandhi Square in Johannesburg,” she recalled. “I was 17 and had never even seen a double-storey building in my life. I looked around and it was like, ‘I’m going to own this city’.”

Eight years later, she has not yet quite conquered it all. But on Thursday she became the first black woman to open a major art gallery – named Sibisi, naturally enough, for someone so ambitious – in South Africa.

It is a sign, she believes, that anything is possible for the country’s “born free” generation. “All I have to do is look at myself and my background,” she said. “Growing up, I would never have thought I’d be exposed to so many opportunities. South Africa is free.

“I go all over the world and people are closed up and they can’t express themselves. South Africa allows you to be you and to be whatever it is you want to be.”

The country’s visual arts scene, dominated by the white minority during racial apartheid, has not transformed as quickly as some would like.Gallery Momo, the first 100% black-owned gallery, opened in Johannesburg in 2003, while the national gallery in Cape Town has anon-white director for the first time in its 140-year history.

Young black artists such as Mary Sibande and Nicholas Hlobo are also gaining unprecedented attention on the world stage.

Sibisi reflected: “Of course it’s dominated by white people, if it’s 2012 and this is only the second black-owned gallery being opened. But I think there’s room for change: people know this new gallery is coming up and are receiving it in a positive way. Perhaps it needed someone as brave as me to say I’m going for it.”

South Africa continues to face twin crises of education and employment. Millions of young black people drop out of school, lack skills and fail to find work. But Sibisi typifies a relatively small but undeniably growing class who are confident, upwardly mobile and unburdened by the past.

Her parents, who farm cattle in a village in KwaZulu-Natal province in the east of South Africa, never learned English.

“My mum has never been to the city,” Sibisi said. “She thinks the city is the devil’s land. But they believed in education so when we were growing up they sent us to private schools with cattle money. Then I came to Johannesburg and I’ve always been the diva in the family who wanted to do everything.”

Now 25, Sibisi is a successful entrepreneur with her own marketing agency, charitable foundation and media company, but she recently discovered a passion for art.

Some believe the momentum of change is now unstoppable. Monna Mokoena, the founder of Gallery Momo, said: “We’re there now. When I started, I wasn’t looking at black people collecting works because of the dynamics of the country. But that is changing and we’re seeing a lot of black folks buying works. There is a mindshift.”

Gabriel Clark-Brown, editor of the South African Art Times, said: “I think things are changing really quite rapidly and going the right way. It’s very encouraging to see a black gallerist … [there is] a huge potential that no one has explored. It just needs more exposure to the rising black middle class; it’s a rapidly growing market and there’s a huge amount of money generated. “