In the small village of Mbokota in Elim, Limpopo is a community named after their sacred Ribola mountain.
For over 100 years, this community of craftspeople has passed down their knowledge to the next generation of sculptors, textile designers, painters, musicians and artists who now even weld sculptures using recycled materials.
All without formal education.
Where do they get their brilliance? From communing with their ancestors through dreams.
According to the artists, most of their art comes to them while they sleep or during a pilgrimage to the Ribola mountain. Sometimes they will have a dream which directs them to a certain piece of wood in the forest and they will keep the wood at their home until they receive a message of what the wood is to become.
This is the village which has produced legends such as Jackson Hlungwani and Thomas Kubayi. Their art sits at homes and monuments across the globe.
On an afternoon in this village, you are likely to find the youth teaching music to the young ones as well as artists wielding their carving tools while tending to unfinished sculptures.
Kubayi says he sometimes sits with the same piece of wood for over a year until it communicates to him what it would like to become.
Their works of art are a combination of the physical world and the spiritual plane which they portray through animals. The fish is prominent in their art and so are mythical characters from folklore, including humans with multiple heads. These sculptures are carved to symbolise messages from the ancestors to the physical world and they usually depict blessings of peace or warnings of things to come.
The artists used to make money through hosting tourists as well as selling their work but Covid-19 disrupted their lives, drying up the former flood of tourists. Yet the artists soon found a way around their challenge by selling their work online.
For over 100 years this community has thrived from the work of their hands and the inspiration drawn from the present, the past and future shared through dreams by their ancestors and their sacred mountain.
And they are still passing on what they know.
Pictures: Love Limpopo
