212THE ALLURE OF THE VENEERto free her work from the racial and gender stereotypes that a predomi-
nantly white and western art world imposes on minority groups—the ex-
pectation of a form of unacknowledged contemporary primitivism that
romanticizes Africa through the construction of an authenticity nurtured
by white consumers’ market variables. In opposition, the artist argues
that attention should be given to the physical and tactile qualities of the
hides and the aspects of control that allow or prevent her manipulation
of the animal skin. And this emphasis is indeed essential to her work.
Mntambo’s pieces ultimately encourage important, alternative modes of
looking at both the animal and the female body.^58 But despite a self-
professed interest in materiality and the desire to prevent certain readings
of her work, the artist seems to simultaneously undermine the animal
material she uses. In Mntambo’s view, the skins are symbols of “sacrifices
in rituals of birth, initiation, marriage, thanksgiving, appeasement and
death,” but I believe that their strength really lies in their irreducible es-
sence as a surface layer peeled off from an animal.^59 This ambiguity with
which the animal skins are incorporated in her work is accentuated by
the fact that Mntambo never includes cow heads in her sculptures. The
removal of the head causes specific alterations of the ways in which the
materiality of the skin is allowed to intermingle with cultural references
and texts. Unlike Inert, in which the stark realism of the animal head de-
fined the allure of the art object, Mntambo’s hides appear more readily
suspended between the status of garment and that of a once living being.
In Umfanekiso wesibuko (Mirror Image), two cowhides of slightly dif-
ferent shades of brown have been molded to suggest two female bodies
with hands and knees to the floor. Here, the absent artist’s body and that
of the cows from which the skins have been removed appear to be mi-
metically aligned as closely as they could possibly be. The animal skins
adhere to the upper part of the bodies and elegantly unfold to the ground,
visually alluding to female dresses. Likewise, the way in which the objects
are positioned in the gallery space, and their abstract/figurative aesthetic
essence, are designed to engage the viewer in a tableau-objet dynamic.
The open form that characterizes their presence deliberately invites the
viewer to move around them in an attempt to better grasp their essential
qualities. In this instance, more than any other in Mntambo’s work, the
skins metaphorically allude to the transhistorical, metaphorical, and eco-
nomic overlap between women and cows. We are thus pushed back to the