Asemahle Ntlonti is a 28-year-old multidisciplinary artist from Cape Town, originally from Ngcobo, a small village in the Eastern Cape. She is known for her sculptures, paintings, installations and art performances. For her paintings, she makes her canvas surface using soap and packaging materials such as flour sacks or potato sacks. When asked why, she replied, “I enjoy using found objects, something that has had a different use and refurbish it to something else to add more flair into my work.”

From 25 September to 2021 to 28 February 2022 Ntlonti showcased her art at the KRONE X WHATIFTHEWORLD 40 under 40 exhibition at the Twee Jonge Gezellen Estate in Tulbagh, South Africa. She was part of 40 young African creatives under the age of 40 who were considered to have been showing promise in the art world.

Ntlonti began her artistic journey at just 11, with drawing being her first discipline. Speaking to AMAKA, she shares, “I was 11 years old in the Eastern Cape when my late cousin, who had Dragon Ball Z tokens, would ask me to draw the characters. I did it for fun and was fascinated by the fact that I could draw. He ended up selling those drawings of mine, and it was cool at the time. Art is something that I stumbled upon. When I moved to Cape Town, I went to school with art and started enjoying it. I spent most of my time drawing, and that passion grew even more. Others were shocked when I told them I would apply to study arts in varsity. There were a lot of negative comments, but I’m very stubborn, so I didn’t back down. If I wasn’t stubborn and listened to what people had to say, I would’ve been on a different journey. It feels good. It feels right. I chose art, but at the same time, it chose me.” 

After graduating from the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2017, she focused on works that explored racial history and trauma. She had a lot of questions regarding her surroundings, some of which still go answered as she works artistically to interrogate them. 

“Most of my work was about where I’m from. I asked many questions like why we moved to Cape Town, rituals in my family, a lot about my history. I started creating work about everything that has happened in my family. There was a lot of trauma and violence that were affecting black people, particularly my family. I used to speak about people that passed on during apartheid or before. That their souls never fully rested. That bothered me quite a lot, and that’s how I started making work about people that are no longer on this planet and are in a different realm. Post Michaelis, I reached a dead-end, and my mother couldn’t answer all those questions I had for her. So I stopped and started making work that made me feel less heavy because what I was picking was quite heavy”, says Ntlonti. 

Her latest work titled, "Ncekelela" (meaning “hang on” in Zulu), is the one that is currently showcasing at 40 under 40. For this art piece, she created ityali/itshali (a Xhosa/Zulu traditional blanket) using beads and made a safety pin from old metal.   

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Skills like beadwork are a central medium of knowledge sharing among women of the Xhosa community from which Ntlonti descends. The artistry is passed on from woman to woman.

For the 40 under 40 exhibition, she worked with Monkey Biz, a non-profit organisation that focuses on reviving the traditions of beadwork. Historically, local women would sit together creating beaded jewellery and accessories (known as Intsimbi in Xhosa) while teaching young girls about womanhood. The women who work at Monkey Biz are from Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town; they were the ones to formally introduce her to the practice.

Ntlonti recalls, "I looked at the history of beadwork, how whenever beadwork is done people usually sit around, singing and having conversations and most of the time, it is women. It troubled me that I didn’t know how to make beads, so I self-taught through YouTube because I didn’t grow up with my grandmother. I didn’t have time to learn the skill because it’s usually passed on from woman to woman in the family. It was a great experience for me to learn from other women that I’ve never met before, teaching me the skill thoroughly and hopefully, I will pass it on to my kids because that’s the history of this medium. You have to pass it on to someone so that it doesn’t die out. That was the idea behind the work." 

Speaking on the inspiration behind her piece “Ncekelela”, which explores the use of ityali and safety pins, Ntlonti says, “When I went to Eastern Cape last year, there was a group of women all wearing shawls around their shoulders. They were all wearing different blankets (ityali); these were married women from the village. Whenever someone has a ceremony or ritual, the women wear a blanket (ityali) over their shoulders and clip it with a safety pin, creating a cape. It symbolises many things, the strength of a woman and how the women are the ones who hold the family together, the submissive women. Some people may look at it in a bad way, but there’s so much power that lies within the women of the village.” 

She further explains, "When I saw that image, I was already working with safety pins from the varsity. So I wanted to draw all those elements into one show. I would like to think that it worked. I enjoyed working with the ladies from Khayelitsha.” 

Ntlonti, who is on her third solo exhibition, has also participated in successful group exhibitions, including “Space and Place” at the Eigen + Art, Germany, in 2021. Curated by Khanya Mashabela, this exhibition featured 15 artists from Europe and South Africa. Some of the artists who were part of the exhibition include Sepideh Mehraban, Gabrielle Kruger and Hanna Stiegeler — to name but a few. 

In 2019 she participated in “The Female Line” at SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, a women-only led project aimed at looking into the issues that lie within the matrilineal society and asking questions like “what binds women in their otherness?” and “what strips them of their togetherness?”. Some of the women who participated in this exhibition include fellow artists Chechu Álava, Romina Bassu, Iris Schomaker, Brett Seile, and Sepideh Mehraban.  

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Reflecting on her past endeavours, Ntlonti tells AMAKA, "My first show was at Blank. I had met Jonathan Garnham (director at Blank Projects) during the fourth year in varsity when he came to my then studio. I joked around and said, ‘can I have a show in your space'? We exchanged ideas because he’s very experienced, he has travelled a lot and knows many artists. I had a show at his gallery. Inside the gallery was this large installation of plastic plates called Umhlangano (meaning gathering). Each plate had the surname of each family member. Where I’m from in the Eastern Cape, if there is a funeral at your home, you may need like 50 plates and chairs, and at the back, you should write your surname so that they don’t get lost. From a distance, it looked like smarties, but as you walked closer, they were plates pasted in different colours. It was a beautiful experience because a car guard was working at the gallery, and he said that for the first time, he came inside because he recognised the plates, and they sparked something in him."

This year, Ntlonti wants to spend more time in the studio, exploring different materials to create more culturally and historically inquisitive art. “I’m excited to spend more time behind the scenes and give birth to more projects. I just want to polish my work, and the rest is going to control itself. As long as I do my part, which is to create”, she concludes.