Article · Original
Experience the art and legacy of Dr. Esther Mahlangu
Nov 11, 2026
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Discover Google Arts & Culture's online retrospective of the South African artist, which features more than 45 curated stories, virtual tours, and her early memories brought to life with AI.
Dr Nontobeko Ntombela
Senior Lecturer, Department of Curatorial, Public and Visual Cultures, Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand
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Today we’re sharing the first online retrospective of artist Dr. Esther Mahlangu on Google Arts & Culture, honoring her pioneering spirit on her 91st birthday. More than 45 stories and a rich archive covering her art, life, and legacy are now accessible to a global audience.
For many years, I have worked closely with Esther and her family. It’s a relationship built on years of research and a deep admiration for her as both an artist and a person. It was out of this long-standing connection that the vision for “‘Then I Knew I Was Good at Painting’: Esther Mahlangu, a Retrospective,” was born.
My goal has always been to present a comprehensive exploration of her life and work, contributing to my long-standing research on South African women artists who have made an impact on the arts since the early 20th century.
Through my research, I gathered a rich collection of her work, including large-scale murals, intimate pieces, and rare archival materials. But the archives didn’t include anything from her life before 1980, so crucial pieces of her history were missing. This void challenged us to find new ways to tell her full story.
A collaboration session with Esther Mahlangu, Nontobeko Ntombela, and the Google team.
In collaboration with Google Arts & Culture, we used AI to visually recreate Esther’s undocumented memories. The process brought us closer to her work and prompted further recollections from Esther herself.
This project brought our curatorial and archival work together with the technical expertise of Google DeepMind and Google Arts & Culture Lab, alongside research and design studio Domestic Data Streamers’ synthetic memories initiative. Through a series of workshops and interviews, we were able to document a missing period of Mam' Esther's history, from when she started painting at age 10 until her first documented works in 1980. These stories — such as the moment she discovered her talent for painting as a 10-year-old using feathers instead of a brush — became the source material for our work. Following the methodology from the synthetic memories initiative and using archival material, the team generated still images based on Esther’s memories. They then used Veo to turn the images into videos that brought Esther's early days to life.
The stories also contribute to the online archive of Esther’s life on Google Arts & Culture. More than 45 exhibitions, curated in collaboration with Art of Contemporary Africa, Iziko Museums of South Africa, the British Museum, the Jean Pigozzi Collection, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and Serpentine, tell the story of how she came to be known in the world, through her artwork, archives, Street View, and more.
This project demonstrates a new way to approach the preservation of cultural heritage, with technology that’s guided at every step by a respect for personal memory and historical accuracy.
It is my hope that this retrospective cements Esther’s place as a pivotal voice in global contemporary art, invites audiences to reimagine the possibilities of her archive, and ensures her story and her artistic vision can inspire generations to come.
Explore the exhibition at goo.gle/esther-mahlangu.
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