Matrilineal Materiality: Kutlwano Monyai

Kutlwano Angela Monyai was born in Limpopo in 1996, and now lives and works in Johannesburg. She graduated with a degree and post-graduate diploma in Fine and Applied Arts from the Tshwane University of Technology.

 

Monyai uses familiar materials that resonate with her life experiences, and has over the years mastered her style of painting and mixed material experiments, which germinated from her obsession with maps. Coming from a place where most people strongly believe in ancestral bondage, that is what has been the driving factor in her work. This bondage is aligned with physical, spiritual and emotional connections to places of birth, to those that people evolve to occupy and make their own.

 

The inspiration for much of Monyai's work comes through as a form of communication through dreams, and the artist developed a practice of investigating the methodologies of dream interpretations, in order to better understand the complexities of human relations with their environment, cultural beliefs, and general human intuitions. It is a journey impacting the psychological paradigm, socio-conventional systems, and family dynamics. Monyai has claimed maps as a metaphorical site for her to investigate and interpret these elements of her life experiences, using the familiar materials to recognize and acknowledge the abstract relationships, to eventually be able to denote and narrate events through their space and time.