Esther Mahlangu’s vibrantly graphic paintings were first presented within an international art context in the renowned exhibition Magicien de la tierre (Magicians of the Earth) at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1989. Part of the Ndebele people of South Africa, her works translate to the Western format of framed paintings the geometric patterns historically developed by women in beadwork and as paintings on the outer walls of homes. The latter is executed during rituals involving the passage of boys to manhood. The untitled work in Spiritual Constellations, rendered in acrylic on canvas, is characteristic of Mahlangu’s innovations of this tradition, which fills a black and white structure of triangular patterning with pink, green, blue, yellow, and gray paint. These are painted in a particularly flat and opaque manner, that recalls the mural tradition on which they are based.