When African Art Lands on Sneakers
4 Images
by Filippo Piva
View gallery
The chilly Nordic design meets the color and warmth of African fantasies. It is a collaboration between opposite latitudes of the planet that the Swedish brand Eytys has initiated with South African artist Esther Mahlangu. The result: the Ndebele paintings, with their geometric patterns drawn in the brightest hues, land on sneakers this spring, creating a delightful mix of past and modernity, rural worlds and metropolitan realities.
After all, Esther Mahlangu, born in 1935, is no stranger to this kind of contamination between the traditional art of the populations of Southern Africa and more modern and international contexts. In addition to exhibiting in true institutions like the Centre Pompidou and the Guggenheim in Bilbao, she has also collaborated on the Bmw Art Car project, and her very personal bodywork stands alongside those designed by Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, and Frank Stella.
The same geometric shapes, the same colors so deeply linked to the African soil have thus appeared on the Eytys Doja, in a double black and white version. The shoes will be available from February 22 in authorized stores and on the brand’s official website, priced at 210 euros.