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This photo essay celebrates the mural art of Basotho (buh-SOO-too) women from the Free State province of South Africa. I began to photograph their decorated mud houses in 1988, and they later became the topic of my dissertation, completed in 1994. My fieldwork led to an photographic exhibition of Basotho murals, ceremonies, and everyday life (first shown at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, New York, and subsequently at the Musee National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Oceanie in Paris, the Birmingham Museum of Art, and other venues) and then to the publication of African Painted Houses: Basotho Dwellings of Southern Africa, from which this photo essay is drawn (see review, p. 89).
Basotho women say that their murals call the ancestors, appealing to them for their blessings, particularly rain. When the rains come, they wash away the decorations, which are replaced by different designs in the next dry season. The mural tradition is called litema (dee-TAYmah), a word derived from the verb ho lema, "to cultivate," which was traditionally the task of women. Litema refers to four mural techniques: engraved patterns and mural painting, which are found on most houses, and bas-relief and stone mosaic, which are rarer. The engraved patterns, created by drawing into wet plaster, represent cultivated fields. They may be viewed as landscapes, composed of the very substance they represent.
Painted designs formerly consisted of natural ochers and pigments. These are supplemented today with inexpensive powder paints, often mixed into whitewash. The most important color is red, called letsoku,...