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Ubuhle Women: Beadwork & the Art of Independence
January 24, 2025 - April 25, 2025
Liberty Hall Academic Center Gallery
About the Exhibition
Ubuhle Beads is a collective of female beadwork artists founded in 1999 by Bev Gibson and master beader Ntombephi Ntombela on a sugar plantation in South Africa that empowers and changes the perspective of African women. The organization allowed for women artists
of South Africa to have a platform to use their generational talents for financial independence that was not previously available.
Utilizing Czech glass beads and inspired by Xhosa headscarves and skirts the artists wore growing up, Ubuhle Women: Beadwork & the Art of Independence portrays a beadwork style developed by those living in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa called ndwango meaning “cloth” or “rag”. They tell personal stories through symbols of their culture and abstract figures.
About the Co-Founder
Ntombephi Ntobela was born in June 1966 in Bizana in the Eastern Cape. She is Mpondo Xhosa. She learned to bead from her grandmother who wore beaded garments when she was a child. Ntombephi’s sense of beading and of the significance of color and pattern is grounded in the traditional Mpondo framework.
In her early thirties Ntombephi followed her husband Malume to KwaZulu-Natal where he had migrated to work as a cane cutter on a sugar plantation. To supplement their income, she began to make beadwork items to sell in Durban.
Ntombephi is a master beader, and she has taught many other women to bead. Her skill as a beader was the initial impetus for her co-founding Ubuhle with Bev Gibson in 1999.
She is known as “Induna” which means “leader,” a term of reverence and admiration in South Africa. The title also indicates her responsibility for the community, viewing herself as a guardian of its future. Ntombephi hopes to establish the Ubuhle guild so the
children, including the orphans of her sisters Bongiswa and Thembani and other orphans cared for by the community, will one day learn to bead.
Selected Works
Artist Statement of Living Artists
“When I use patterns which remind me of my granny it really speaks to the heart of who I am and takes me home. She was the person who taught me how to bead. These patterns mean love to me.” - Ntombephi “Induna” Ntobela
Zandile Ntobela lives at the Ubuhle farm and is one of the community’s most successful artists. Heavily inspired by flowering of ornamental Japanese cherry blossoms, her patterns representing the flowers have become a signature of her work.
Thando Ntobela is Zandile’s full sister and Induna’s half-sister. Colors are used to represent experiences, emotions, and people in her life. White, red, blue, green and orange remind her of her mother while dark colors remind her of her father.
Zondilie Zondo is currently one of the only Zulu members of the group, her cultural heritage is reflected in her style of beadwork using brighter colors, a broader pallette and bold patterns. Her work has been crucial to the development of this art form.
Nonhlakanipho Mndiyatha is a distant relative of the Ntobela sisters and was taught beadwork by her grandmother. Her signature patterns are of a traditional, Xhosa rural, white house with a thatch roof that appears in most of her works.
Deceased artists are remembered throughout the work through current artists sewing their grief into their beadwork.