Art spot

Have you noticed that Johannesburg city has been clad in artworks? It's hard not to.

Mary Sibande is one of our foremost contemporary artists whose works have been spread across our urban landscape, transforming the inner city into one of the world's largest outdoor galleries.

Lesley Perkes, manager of Artists at Work which has organised many of the installations, says: "By bringing the arts into public spaces for free, we nourish people's creative spirit. "

With R5.5-million funding from the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, Perkes has helped reclaim and rejuvenate these public spaces by exhibiting 19 building wraps from Sibande's Long Live The Dead Queen art project.

The works have inspired conversation and debate, but Sibande explains that the works celebrate the women in her family by elevating them and putting them onto a pedestal of royalty.

"I started from the beginning. The queen is my great grandmother, who was a maid, and she passed on the 'domestic relay baton' to my grandmother who passed it to my mom. But my mother didn't pass it to me. I was born in the '80s and South Africa was changing. I had the freedom to choose my own destiny," says Sibande.

Of the positive power that exudes from her work, Sibande says: "There's so much negativity in this history of ours, why dwell on it? Looking back at the women in my family who didn't have the freedom that I have, I saw their strength, perseverance and the sacrifices they made. I wanted to highlight this."