BMW Art Car (Esther Mahlangu)

In 1991 the South African Ndebele artist Esther Mahlangu was commissioned by BMW to paint a full-scale BMW 525i sedan for the company's ongoing series of Art Cars, applying the bold geometric patterns of traditional Ndebele mural painting, usually made on the walls of homes, directly to the vehicle's bodywork. The commission made Mahlangu the first African artist and the first woman to design a BMW Art Car, and came at a symbolically charged moment shortly after the release of Nelson Mandela and amid the end of apartheid in South Africa. The car has since been exhibited internationally, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. in 1994 and at the British Museum in 2016 and 2017, and it remains one of the best known examples of a traditional African art form transposed onto an industrial object.