Billie Zangewa

Billie Zangewa (born 1973, in Blantyre, Malawi) is a Malawian artist whose textile-based practice explores Black femininity, domestic life, motherhood, intimacy, and the politics of everyday experience. Working across hand-stitched silk collage, tapestry, and drawing, Zangewa examines self-representation, care, vulnerability, and empowerment through luminous fabric compositions that elevate ordinary moments into scenes of quiet significance. Her work often centers women’s lives and domestic environments, framing acts of nurturing, rest, and self-possession as sites of agency and what she has described as “daily feminism.”  Zangewa received her B.F.A. from Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, in 1995, where she studied printmaking. Over time, she moved away from painting and printmaking toward hand-sewn silk collage, developing a distinctive practice rooted in fabric, fragmentation, and personal narrative. Her work often engages autobiography, motherhood, fashion, labor, and home-making, using raw silk, appliqué, and meticulous stitching to consider the emotional and symbolic dimensions of women’s lives, especially within African and diasporic contexts.  Her work has been exhibited at SITE Santa Fe, Brighton CCA, John Hansard Gallery, the Harvey B. Gantt Center, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the Centre Pompidou, MASS MoCA, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. She lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.