Sculptor works towards setting up his own wax museum
Durban — Lionel Messi, Gwede Mantashe and Morgan Freeman are living in Verulam with a number of other celebrities including Arnold “The Terminator” Schwarzenegger.
The Sunday Tribune’s news team also shook hands with two versions of President Cyril Ramaphosa whose expanding waistline was captured in wax versions created by Durban’s wax sculptor Lungelo Gumede.
The artist this week posed for pictures with Bafana Bafana veteran Teko Modise, while Paul Pogba, who now plays for Serie A club Juventus, rocked his old Manchester United kit in the background.
All of these celebrities are of course wax sculpted by Gumede who had no option but to find alternative accommodation for the dummies after his studio at the Bat Centre in Durban was flooded, damaging about 60 of his creations.
“So I had to move and work at home while they were still fixing and renovating the Bat Centre. Then after that I got used to working at home and also most of the statues were damaged or destroyed during the floods, so now I’ve got nothing to display,” he said.
Over the years Gumede has suffered many heart-stopping moments after stumbling into Michael Jackson or former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe while heading to the toilet in the dark, and sometimes even during the day.
“It is frightening, they scare me. I’m telling you, I’ll go out of the studio and when I come back then I’m like, ‘who's this one now? Oh, it’s a statue’,” he said.
Gumede fell in love with wax sculptures when he visited Madame Tussauds in New York and just knew that he had to learn how to make them.
He returned home and taught himself. The results were astounding – every personality is researched before it is made into a lifelike version, from the texture of the hair to the skin tone, height and clothing. For instance, he couldn’t buy Michael Jackson’s clothing and so he designed it. He bought the material and got someone to sew the costume.
“We learned how to do sculpture at DUT (Durban University of Technology). They didn't teach us how to use wax but it’s more or less the same thing. If you can use clay to sculpt, you can also use wax. You can also use wood, stone, marble, anything, as long as you learn the basics. So I learnt the basics from DUT when I did fine arts in 2004, 2005, and 2006. I only went to Madame Tussauds in 2007.”
Gumede said wax was easy to work with because it didn’t crack and gave the sculptures a more lifelike appearance. The one disadvantage was that it melted when it was too hot.
Gumede’s long-term dream is to establish the first wax museum in Africa and he wants it to be close to home in Durban. He says it could become a major tourist attraction, like Madame Tussauds, which is now established in cities across the world.
And while he had close to 200 wax sculptures before the flood damaged his art two years ago, he is now taking commissions for sculptures and occasionally paints portraits as he builds up his finances to procure a warehouse that he can convert into a museum.
He said despite making appeals for funding to all levels of the government as well as attempts to be compensated through the special KZN fund set up to assist businesses which suffered losses during the flood, he had not been successful.
Gumede said he was determined to make his dream come true because many people in South Africa didn’t even know that wax sculptures existed.
“Even with me, who studied art at the tertiary level, Madame Tussauds was the first time I encountered a wax statue.
“That’s why I want to work with this wax museum. There are so many kids in schools who don’t even know what a statue is.”
Gumede said the wax museum would also give children a chance to learn about art.
“I didn’t do art in school, I only did art when I finished matric because we don’t have art as a subject in rural areas. It was only when I finished matric that I realised that what I’m doing is art. Before that I was just a person who was drawing.”
Gumede said he was surprised to learn that one could do art “for a living”.
In the meantime, he has the option of hanging out with Chadwick Boseman of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever fame, or many of South Africa’s anti-apartheid luminaries who are resting in his house while he works towards his dream of setting up a wax museum.
Sunday Tribune