Raised by her grandmother who introduced her to masonry art, teaching her the pictorial styles of the Xhosa and Fingo tradition, ancestral techniques and the use of natural materials, Gladys Mgudlandlu, often called “the Bird Lady” (as she considered birds her only friends), was the first black woman to have a solo exhibition in South Africa under apartheid. Described as an expressionist, Mgudlandlu eluded modernist classifications by calling herself an “imagist dreamer”. Behind a semblance of escape, her landscapes, portraits and bird’s eye views echo crucial themes of colonialism, primarily the continuous condition of expropriation experienced by indigenous peoples.
