Kudu and Xóré II
Kudu and Xóré II
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Title: Kudu and Xóré II
Medium: Monotype
Size: 50 x 65 cm
Edition size: 1/1
Xaga Tcuixgao is a quiet shy woman, who was born sometime in the late 1950s in the Ghanzi district of Botswana. During that time her people still lived as hunter-gatherers. She remembers the men returning from the veld with meat, bow and arrow sets over their shoulders. She loved going out into the wide Kalahari with her mother and the other women to gather tubers, berries and other veld food. The nicest of all foods was the Khuts'uu (Kalahari truffle) which they would find after the late rains. Xaga Tcuixgao remembers times when the rain stayed away and the veldfood was scarce. She would prefer to forget the times of drought. She remembers the warmth of the fire circles and the dances at night. Times changed and she left her carefree childhood to become a childminder on one of the big farms where she did the laundry and housecleaning.
X'aga Tcuixgao's brother Qwaa Mangana (who passed away in 1996) was a founding artist at the Kuru Art Project who created exceptional artwork often combining imagery from the known physical world with insights into the spirit world. When Tcuixgao saw what he was doing, she thought she could also be an artist having excelled at beadwork.
Tcuixgao joined the Kuru Art Project in 1997. She enjoys painting in oils as well as making prints. The sensitive qualities of her etchings, together with the honesty of the subject matter, make her work stand out. Tcuixgao's favourite subjects are the things she knows so well from childhood. The veld food, birds and small creatures such as tortoises and beetles. Veldfood has become for her and the other women at the Kuru Art Project, the symbol of life. She works in a spontaneous and direct way from memory.