Noria Mabasa

Noria Muelwa Mabasa (née Luvhimbi) (born 1938, Shigalo (Xigalo), Malamulele, South Africa) is a Tsonga artist, who works primarily in ceramic and wood sculpture.

Completely self-taught, Mabasa currently resides at the Tshino village in the Vuwani area of Venda, where she runs an art school in which she instructs her students in the art of clay-pot and sculpture making. She began working with clay in 1974 and two years later, in 1976, she became the first Tsonga woman to work in wood. She received local training.

Noria Mabasa completed one year of formal education at a school located three hours walking distance from her childhood home, but had to discontinue schooling in lieu of household chores. In 1965 she began having recurring dreams of an old woman who showed her how to work in the clay medium, and prompted her to receive local training on the traditional craft. Her first clay figures were often small and were often given away to local children. She continues to create work inspired by the messages and visions of her dreams.

Mabasa has working as an artist since 1976, and was encouraged to begin woodcarving after the suggestion of Venda sculptor Nelson Mukhuba in 1983. Her earliest figures were modeled after clay and wood matano figures used in domba initiation ceremonies. Mabasa initially found recognition on both the national and international art scenes in the 1980s with her ceramic figures painted with enamel paint. Her naturalistic figures are coil-built and fired in an open straw fire. Her current work combines the figurative and the functional; pots often take the shape of the female figure or feature faces.

Mabasa's works deal mostly with traditional issues, particularly those pertaining to women, as well as subjects of Venda mythology and spirituality. Her wooden sculptures The Flood (1994) and Union Buildings (1999) are among her most well known works.

• Arnold, Marion and Brenda Schmahmann. Between Union and Liberation: Women Artists in South Africa 1910–1990. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005.
• Visonà, Monica B., Robin Poynor, and Herbert M. Cole. A History of Art in Africa. 2nd Ed. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001.