Context (CMS Context)
Artist Biography given by the Kuru Development Trust. 'QWAA (Xg'oa Mangana. Born in the 1920s on the farm Sandspruit near D'Kar. Qwaa spent his childhood in the nomadic lifestyle of his hunter-gatherers parents. He received no formal schooling. As an adult he gained experience as a lime-digger, cattle herder for various farmers and as a labourer (carrying, sifting and washing sand) for an English prospector. Additionally he taught himself to make and repair all kind of leatherwork items. It was his elegant sense of design evident in these products and in his style of dressing, which first caught the eye of the art project co-ordinator, which made him become one of the firsts to join the art project.

His favourite subject is animals. However from his first drawing he has depicted half-human figures (literally without lower body) with round, staring eyes, which he describes as the equivalent of "Satan". Various drawings depict spirits as in "spirit of a man who died and came back as a bird". Some of Qwaa's figures reflect the anthropomorphic figures of earlier San art. He was also a healer during trance dances. Qwaa died in 1997.' Taken from http://www.africaserver.nl/kuru/english/artists/qwaa.htm
Event Date 12/2/2014
Author: Rachel Hand

Context (CMS Context)
Presented by The Art Fund and the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation. An acquisition project to build a collection of modern and contemporary work on paper from Australia, Canada and South Africa was undertaken over 2011-13 with the support of a grant under The Art Fund's RENEW programme. The collection was developed with the expert advice and generous assistance of Annie Coombes and Norman Vorano in relation to South African and Inuit artists respectively. Khadija Carroll, Anita Herle and Diana Wood Conroy also contributed to the selection process. Obtained from the Kuru Development Trust, Ghanzi, Botswana, November 2013.
Event Date 12/2/2014
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Reduction linocut by Xg'oa Mangana (Qwaa) titiled 'Gemsbok and Lion', edition 9/20.
Event Date 12/2/2014
Author: maa