Following traditions passed down from her mother and grandmother, she learned traditional Ndebele wall painting and beadwork as a child. She became an expert in executing murals as a teenager, using a range of paint colours.<\/p>\n
Between 1980 and 1991 she lived and worked at the Botshabelo Historical Village, an open-air museum of Ndebele culture near Middelburg, Mpumalanga.<\/p>\n
In 1986, researchers from Paris, who were travelling the world to document traditional arts, saw the paintings on Mahlangu\u2019s house. They invited her to create murals for an exhibition of international contemporary art, the Magiciens de la Terre. She travelled to France in 1989, stayed there for two months, and painted a house in front of thousands of spectators.<\/p>\n