MAKWANDE ART INITIATIVE: Rest, Create, Rise: A Residency for African and Diasporic Women Artists in the South of France

Makwande Art Initiative proudly welcomes Lesego Seoketsa, a young, gifted South African visual artist, to Mandelieu-La Napoule, France, as part of our Accelerator Program for emerging African female artists.

Lesego will continue her powerful series titled “Amacici”, the isiZulu word for earrings—a body of work deeply rooted in themes of adornment, memory, identity, and liberation. Through this series, she explores how acts of beautification—using jewelry, makeup, and fashion—serve as tools of self-expression, reclamation, and healing.

From Repression to Expression

Raised in a religious household where adornment was forbidden, Lesego’s childhood was marked by strict definitions of modesty. Beauty rituals like wearing jewelry, doing makeup, or coloring hair were considered sinful, creating a lasting emotional tension between spiritual belief and self-expression.

Yet, even as a child living in the township, she was surrounded by visual cues that sparked her imagination—gold teeth, vibrant hairstyles, glamorous nails—symbols of a personal freedom that was both admired and taboo. Over time, these repressed desires evolved into a deep artistic inquiry into the sociopolitical meanings of adornment and the ways women use their bodies as living canvases of identity and culture.

A Visual Language of Liberation

In Amacici, Lesego unpacks how patriarchy and religious conservatism have historically denied women autonomy over their appearance and, by extension, their selfhood. She highlights how expressive dress—often judged or dismissed—has always been a quiet rebellion, a celebration of individuality, and a reclaiming of narrative.

Drawing from Southern African ceremonial traditions, Western fashion icons like Elsa Schiaparelli, and the surrealism of Salvador Dalí, Lesego bridges the real and the fantastical. Her work merges spirituality, fantasy, and cultural memory to create a symbolic universe where adornment becomes both armor and art.

Healing Through Creation

This residency provides a space for Lesego to revisit, reclaim, and reimagine her inner child’s dreams. Through painting, she channels the memories of township women—neighbors, teachers, churchgoers, mothers, and fashionistas—who expressed resilience and radiance through beauty rituals. She reflects on the therapeutic power of salons, the emotional release of transformation, and how adornment allows women to return to themselves.

With Amacici, Lesego is building a vibrant, abstract world where femininity is free, beauty is revolutionary, and the self is sacred.

In partnership with the Municipality of the City of Antibes

In 2021, Undiscovered Canvas, in collaboration with the Municipality of the City of Antibes, proudly hosted South African visual artist Lulama ‘Wolf’ Mlambo at the historic Villa Fontaine in Antibes on the Côte d’Azur.

Situated near the famed Safranier settlement and overlooking Nikos Kazantzakis Square, Villa Fontaine—gifted to the city by arts patron Marie-Jeanne Fontaine—offered Mlambo a unique creative sanctuary. The villa’s breathtaking views of the Cap d’Antibes and its legacy as a home for artists provided fertile ground for a residency steeped in reflection, experimentation, and spiritual inquiry.

A Journey Through Spirit, Space, and Self

During her time in Antibes, Mlambo continued developing her deeply personal and symbolic series exploring spirituality, rest, and the visual language of adornment and identity. Working under the guiding phrase:
“Iyabukisa Izondisa ngbangaboni” — It is so beautiful, even the blind are not offended,
she engaged with themes of vernacular architecture, Black spiritual life, and the lingering residues of pre-colonial African experiences.

As an artist whose practice is rooted in neo-expressionism and modern African aesthetics, Mlambo’s approach weaves together ancestral memory, ritual, and surrealism. Her signature use of scraping, smearing, and dense pigment layering evokes the tactile storytelling traditions passed down through generations—particularly by African women adorning domestic spaces with symbolic markings.

History as Material, Memory as Method

Mlambo’s work during the residency interrogated the absence of Black spiritual narratives in dominant historical archives. Her paintings transformed into sacred portals—tender, protective spaces where her imagined cosmology could unfold. She blurred the line between fantasy and the deeply real, building a world where Black rest, beauty, and complexity were foregrounded and exalted.

Looking back, the 2021 residency marked a pivotal moment in Mlambo’s career—a time of both creative expansion and personal reclamation. It remains a cherished chapter in Undiscovered Canvas’s ongoing mission to champion African women artists on the global stage.