The Walking House collection comes home

May 11, 2024 5:44 PM

30 years ago, a set of paintings for a showing in Sweden painted by Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi went missing. They have been found and returned to her. From an online biography: "In her work, Mmakgabo Sebidi traverses mental and physical landscapes with an eye trained on the dangerous, the discomfiting, the traumatic and the ecstatic in human experience. She is deeply grounded in her rural upbringing and traditions but also finely attuned to the rhythms of the city in which she has spent much of her adult life. Sebidi brings together these two worlds in works of great visionary and prophetic power. Her themes are wide-ranging: her cultural roots, the wisdom of the ancestors, the ravages of the modern world on the human psyche, the loss of tradition, the potential of human creativity to build relationships and restore the past." Helen Sebidi to exhibit rediscovered work after 30 years. (SLYT)
posted by Rufous-headed Towhee heehee (3 comments total)

Hooray! This is wonderful work.
I was grabbed by the use of the passive voice in the post and was curious why you had worded it that way, R-h T heehee. Apparently, no fingers are pointed. Why was this not treated as a major art theft at the time? I just can't imagine.

I guess the important thing is that the majority of the paintings have been found, but as far as the missing four, someone deserves a permanent itchy bum at the best.
posted by BlueHorse at 6:26 PM on May 11

BlueHorse it does seem odd how no one responsible is named:

With her artworks unframed and wrapped in rolls, Sebidi traveled to Sweden in 1991. As another artist was currently exhibiting, the curator at the school behind the project assured her to leave them in his care, and he’d call when it was her turn.

That call never came.

Which school? I tried to find it in this article and others, but it's not stated anywhere, unless I missed it? Who was this curator?
posted by Zumbador at 11:06 PM on May 11

The curator pointedly isn't named, but the school is Nyköping Folk High School. It's in the first linked article. It says the works were presumed stolen but were actually just stuffed in a cupboard and forgotten.

I can't imagine the relief the artist must be feeling! Thanks so much for posting this lovely story.
posted by goo at 2:04 AM on May 13