Billie Zangewa (born in 1973 in Blantyre, Malawi, lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa) works primarily with raw silk offcuts in intricate hand-stitched collages, creating figurative compositions that explore her intersectional identity in the contemporary context and challenge the historical stereotyping, objectification and exploitation of the black female body. Working in a flat, colourful style, she depicts narratives concerned with experience: both personal and universal. These narratives do not make grand gestures or even overt political statements but rather focus on mundane domestic preoccupations; universal themes connecting us to each other. Almost always the protagonist in her works, Zangewa becomes a heroine whose daily life is revealed through the scenes she illustrates.

Zangewa has exhibited extensively at institutions both locally and internationally, including at SITE Santa Fe (2024), the Barbican (2024), Brighton CCA, United Kingdom (2023), Hirshhorn (2022), Brooklyn Museum (2021), Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco (2021), Astrup Fearnley (2020) Smithsonian Museum of African Art (2019), Norval Foundation (2018), MACAAL (2018), MASS MoCA (2017), Stedelijk Museum (2017), Studio Museum Harlem (2016), iZiko South African National Gallery (2016), Johannesburg Art Gallery (2016), Guggenheim Bilbao (2015), WIELS (2015), La Maison Rouge (2013) and the Menil Collection (2012).

Her work is represented in several notable private and public collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York),  Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library (Preston, United Kingdom), Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH), Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston (Boston, MA), Johannesburg Art Gallery (Johannesburg, South Africa), JP Morgan Chase Art Collection (New York, NY),  Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX), National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, (Washington, D.C), Norval Foundation (Cape Town, South Africa), RISD Museum, (Providence, RI), Spelman College Museum of Fine Art (Atlanta, GA), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (Amsterdam, Netherlands), Tate Modern (London, United Kingdom), LACMA (Los Angeles, California) and Hirshhorn (Washington, DC). In 2018, Zangewa was selected as the Featured Artist for the FNB Joburg Art Fair.