Umlibo was stitched in a tiny Eastern Cape village before taking its climate message all the way to COP28. Three years later, the remarkable tapestry is entering its next chapter. Its sale will help put something back into the community that created it.
Cape Town, South Africa (03 September 2026) – Back in 2023, 43 Eastern Cape artists – mostly women – stitched their homes, livelihoods and changing environment into one enormous 5×2 metre tapestry.
Since then, Umlibo has travelled far beyond the coastal village where it was created, carrying its message about climate change into the world. Now it is going under the hammer.
The hand-stitched artwork will be offered by Strauss & Co during a live virtual auction on 15 September, with a pre-sale estimate of between R250,000 and R300,000.
For those who have been following Umlibo’s journey, the auction has been a long time coming.
When we first shared the tapestry’s story in 2023, the plan was for it to travel to COP28 in Dubai before eventually being auctioned to raise funds for further project work. And travel it certainly did.
Umlibo was created by 41 women and two men from Hamburg and surrounding villages on the Eastern Cape coast through the world-renowned Keiskamma Art Project.
Commissioned by WWF South Africa with funding from the government of Flanders, the tapestry formed part of a marine project focused on sustainable livelihoods.
Its name comes from the isiXhosa word for a pumpkin vine – something that grows and spreads wherever the conditions allow. The artists hoped the message stitched into the artwork would do the same.
At around five metres long and two metres high, Umlibo is packed with scenes from life in Hamburg.
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There are cattle grazing alongside wind turbines, food gardens, fishermen working the estuary and a woman travelling by donkey cart. Appliqué, beadwork and thick coloured cotton bring the landscape to life across hessian, with flowers and waves even rising from the surface in places.
Take a few steps back and those individual scenes become something bigger – a butterfly!
One wing depicts some of the hardships linked to a warming world. The other looks towards the possibility of a more sustainable future.
The climate story told in the tapestry is not an abstract one for its makers, several stitched their own experiences into the work.
Nozeti Makhubalo once dived for abalone at night and has watched marine stocks become scarcer over time. Kwandi Paliso tends a fenced food garden while dealing with moles, wandering livestock and increasingly unpredictable weather.
The project’s head seamstress, Veronica Betani, worries about whether her cracked home will withstand the stronger winds she expects in future.
Their experiences sit behind scenes of fishing, farming, livestock and food growing. Livelihoods particularly exposed when weather patterns become harder to predict, and natural resources decline.
This very local story later found itself in front of some of the world’s most powerful people.
When Umlibo travelled to COP28 in Dubai in 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa was among those who stopped to take it in.
He said the work “contained everything any head of state needs to say about the climate issue”.
“It is the most amazing piece of work and to know that it was done in the deep rural areas of our country makes me very proud,” he said at the time.
The Keiskamma Art Project has spent more than two decades using large-scale artworks to tell stories that stretch far beyond Hamburg.
Its internationally exhibited works include The Keiskamma Altarpiece, The Keiskamma Guernica, The Creation Altarpiece and The Keiskamma Tapestry. Several confronted the devastating impact of the HIV/Aids epidemic on the community.
Umlibo brought an enormous issue into focus through the lives of people experiencing it firsthand.
“The 43 artists stitched their own home and livelihoods into Umlibo, and showed a changing climate already reshaping them,” says Craig Smith, senior marine specialist at WWF South Africa. “What happens in a tiny village such as Hamburg is a warning for all of us. Nature is our home. Selling the work carries that message forward, and we would love it to go somewhere people can keep engaging with it for years to come.”
The sale will help fund conservation efforts while giving back to the community whose stories, skills and stitches made Umlibo possible.
The pumpkin vine has already travelled further than its makers might once have imagined. Now Umlibo is looking for somewhere new to put down roots!
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