Name: Art made from cowhides
Uploaded: 2025-10-29T18:10:39.661Z
Duration: 6 min 40 s
Description: When you think of sculpting, your mind goes to mediums like clay or bronze, but South African artist Nandipha Mntambo, uses a different material, cowhide! How does she do this?

When you think of sculpting, your mind goes to mediums like clay or bronze, but South African artist Nandipha Mntambo, uses a different material, cowhide! How does she do this?

Cape Town

Nandipam Tumble, originally from Eswatini and now based in Cape Town, creates sculptures from cowhide and zebra hide to explore themes of identity, femininity, and the relationship between humans and animals. Drawing on her background in forensic science, Tumble uses her knowledge of chemical processes to transform animal skins into art that blurs the line between human and animal forms. 

Her work has provoked a range of responses, including misinterpretations related to race, cultural traditions, and animal rights. Tumble emphasizes that her art is about material transformation and confronting perceptions of the human body, rather than making specific cultural or racial statements. She continues her practice in a newly built studio, using her art to invite viewers to reconsider their assumptions about identity and material.

Art made from cowhides

Nandipam Tumble wanted to be a forensic scientist, but ended up sculpting ghosts from cowhide. The thing that happened to me is that I had a dream of a whole lot of cows and what was left over was their skins. So my father, who's now passed, used to be a Methodist bishop. And so I called my dad, I was like, oh, dad, you know, we've got to look for some cowhides. And he was like, what? And you know, as kind of loving and generous as he was at that time, he literally was driving me around Cape Town looking for cowhides, not knowing what exactly I was going to do with them. That dream became the spark for Nandipa. This Eswatini-born artist is turning animal skins into powerful statements on identity and femininity. You know, I think for me, especially with the cowhide, it was more of a universal connector rather than a very African or Southern African sort of question that I was dealing with, because every civilization all over the world actually has some kind of connection to or an experience of the cow. How does she confront identity norms through her proactive use of animal hide? The way that I got into art was that initially I was interested in forensic science. So I had enrolled in Stellenbosch and did a year of that. And you know, I think chemical process and how organic materials work within the chemical process has always been an interesting thing to me. Her scientific background helped her master the chemical process of working with the hide and led her to Michaelis, one of South Africa's top finance institutions. There cowhide became her medium and her message. The themes at that time that I was exploring were questions around mythologies and how we understand the connections between animals and humans. And I think, you know, as human beings, there's this interesting or strange way that we always try and separate ourselves from the animalistic element of who we are. Her sculptures, moulded over mannequins of her own body, blurred the line between human and animal ghostly forms that challenged gender norms and cultural taboos. It was very kind of what felt like a sort of self-torture in a weird way, you know, kind of diving into something that I had no real experience of. But then at the same time, having the end product that is this beautiful, shiny, hairy, nice feeling, cosy material at the end of the day was an interesting kind of contrast to the very torturous, upsetting, beginning-like process of it. Having situations where, you know, if it's summertime and you leave the hide for a day too long, then you've got maggots. Then, you know, the process of cleaning a fresh cow hide is blood, fat, the smell of cow dung, the kind of musty smell of cow hair that's wet. You know, it was a bit torturous when I first started. Her work didn't go unnoticed, but not always in the way she intended. There was a time when I was working exclusively in black hide, and there was the perception that I was making reference to myself and other black people as monkeys. That was a time where I think because of the material and how culturally loaded it is, especially within the context of Africa and Southern Africa specifically, there was the thought that I was making reference to the practice of lobola and the fact that at some point if ever I got married, I would be exchanged for cows. And you know, I think those interpretations or those thought processes were very obtuse because the reality is that, like I said, it was about chemical process and understanding how organic material works. It was about the understanding of the human body as well and how perceptions of a completely hairy female body or looking object would be confrontational in a way. It wasn't about making reference to any sort of race or any particular cultural group. And then also people who are within animal rights, thinking that I killed the animals myself. So, it's been a few ups and downs. The zebra hide came into the picture because the way that I understand even the cow hide was centered around a color palette. So there was a time when I was working exclusively in white hide, a time when I was working exclusively in black hide. And you know, the zebra, I think for me, is such an interesting animal in that each one has its kind of fingerprint or hide print that is totally different from any other. And if you see a whole herd of them, in a weird way, they become a mass. So there's no way of kind of telling the difference between each animal within certain circumstances. And I think about the space of being able to sort of hide in plain sight, in a way. So it's a kind of combination of many different things. A new era in her work is unfolding, still sculpting, still confronting, still asking us to look closer. Today, Nandipa works from a newly built studio, tucked behind her 100-year-old home. Once servants' quarters, now reclaimed for creativity.

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