Zodwa Eslina Maphumulo

South Africa

Year(s) attended: 2005, 2007, 2010

The BAT Shop

Telephone wire basket weaving

When Zodwa Eslina Maphumulo sits down to work, she is weaving together traditional Zulu designs using modern communication materials. The artist from KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa, credits Albert Dlamini and Elliot Mkhize with teaching her the art of telephone wire basket weaving.

Woven telephone wires were first used as beer pot covers. They have since evolved into vessels for serving dry foods, as well as for coveted home decoration employing a variety of colors, such as traditional black and gray designs against a bright orange background.

Zodwa’s work has developed through the years and she now boasts her own styles using different colors of telephone wire to carry out the shapes of women and animals, which figure largely in her work.

She says her large bowl baskets give her a chance to utilize a variety of design and color combinations that often tell stories about the relationships between mother and child, as well as between people and animals. Still another type of basket has a village scene with houses, people and animals with traditional Zulu cultural symbols shown against a teal green background.