Helen Sebidi

Sebidi explored a number of the limited art training options that were available to her at the time. Sebidi met John Koenakeefe Mohl, a fellow artist and director of the White Studio. Mohl served as Sebidi's mentor and is credited for having encouraged Sebidi to pursue a career as an artist, and urging her to develop an individual idiom, establish an independent style and practice as opposed to emulating that of her peers. In 1980, Sebidi furthered her training by spending eighteen months at the Katlehong Art Centre in the east of Johannesburg. She also spent time at the Johannesburg Art Foundation-a multi cultural centre for art education, under the tutelage of fine artist and director Bill Ainslie. In 1985, she took up a teaching position at the Katlehong Art Centre near Germiston. Between 1986 and 1988 she worked for the Johannesburg Art Foundation while teaching at the Alexandra Art Centre. Her work was part of the group exhibition "Bild/konst i södra Afrika (Art/Images in Southern Africa)" which was shown at the Culture House in Stockholm from 19 May to 19-September 1989 and toured the Nordic countries until May 1990.

In the late 1980s, her works became more abstracted without losing their figurative content. Miracle (1987) and Tears of Africa (1988) were two of her seminal works from this era, both in mixed-media charcoal and depicting "contorted, cramped figures with distorted or multiplied features and faces sometimes meeting at right angles". She received the 1989 Standard Bank Young Artist Award.

Sebidi took classes at Dorkay House after meeting Jonathan Koenakeefe Mohl by chance. She studied drawing with him, progressing from plants to landscapes to local architecture. Sebidi returned her hometown when her grandmother grew ill in the mid-1970s. She made art about her lineage at the encouragement of Mohl through her grandmother's death in the early 1980s. Her grandmother let her work in secret and offered historical stories for Sebidi. She made connections with multiple arts organizations and artists Bill Ainslie and David Koloane.

Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmangankato Helen Sebidi (5 March 1943) is a South African artist born in Marapyane (Skilpadfontein) near Hamanskraal, Pretoria who lives and works in Johannesburg. Sebidi's work has been represented in private and public collections, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington and New York the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, New York, and the World Bank. Her work has been recognised internationally and locally. In 1989 she won the Standard Bank Young Artist award, becoming the first black woman to win the award. In 2004, President Thabo Mbeki awarded her the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver – which is the highest honor given to those considered a "national treasure". In 2011, she was awarded the Arts and Culture Trust (ACT) Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Art, whilst in 2015 she received the Mbokodo Award. In September 2018, Sebidi was honoured with one of the first solo presentations at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town – a retrospective entitled Batlhaping Ba Re.