“The MiG-21 Project”: A Jet That Refuses to Be What It Was Built For

As I made my way across the Museum of Flight aircraft pavilion, I couldn't help but be awestruck by the vibrant, kaleidoscopic plane standing among the Boeing 727, fighter jets, and various other aircrafts. In front of me was an MiG-21—but not the typical supersonic jet you would expect to see. This one was covered in intricate, colorful beadwork with a story behind it that transcends the mere history of the plane. The jet shimmered as if lit from within, its surface catching every stray beam of light and casting it into something soft and captivating. Its unique form of art repurposes violence into representations of peace by drawing from recurring icons of history and militarization, and through this process, his art becomes both a confrontation with collective memory and a call for cultural healing.

On show now through January 26, 2026, the MiG-21 Project is the culmination of South African artist Ralf Ziman’s 3-part series called Weapons of Mass Production. To understand how a fighter jet can become a monumental beadwork sculpture, we have to understand the evolution of the trilogy itself: first came the AK-47 project and then the Casspir project. Ziman grew up in South Africa during the dark days of Apartheid, a period marked by state-enforced racial divide and an increased militarized police force. His work emerges from witnessing the government's use of violence as means to control, exploit, and separate communities.

The first two works in Ziman’s Weapons of Mass Production trilogy share a common goal: to confront instruments of violence and war by reimagining them through collective African beadwork. The AK-47 project confronts one of the most iconic weapons in modern history. Since 1949, more than a hundred million AK-47 rifles and variants have been produced worldwide, making it the most widely distributed weapon ever made. Ziman responds by working with Zimbabwe artisans, among them Boas Manzvenga, Panganai Phiri, Lenon Tinarwo, Telmore Masangudza, and Kennedy Mwashusha, to create beaded non-lethal replicas of the weapon, symbolically stripping the weapon of its power and challenging the normalization of the global arms trade. He expands on this concept in the Casspir project, a full-size armored police vehicle once used to enforce apartheid, now covered in 70 million glass beads applied by over 100 South African craftsmen. Accompanying photographs, shot in Kliptown, Soweto, recreate scenes reminiscent of apartheid-era uprisings using fire, smoke, crowds, and symbolic imagery, reclaiming and retelling the stories.

Together, these two works establish the thematic and aesthetic foundation for the MiG-21, Ziman's largest and most complex work. Often called “the AK-47 of the skies,” the MiG-21 is one of the most produced military aircraft in history. The jet appeared in Vietnam, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and numerous African conflicts, including the South African Border War, where Cuban and Angolan MiG-21s eventually gained air superiority, a turning point that contributed to the end of apartheid. In 2019, the 51-foot by 24-foot decommissioned MiG-21 airframe (8971) was acquired in Lakeland, Florida, and transported across the country to Los Angeles. 

For the next five years, Ziman and his teams in Los Angeles and South Africa, including women from the Ndebele tribe, collaborated to cover the jet’s surface in tens of millions of glass beads. The process was painstaking, as the Los Angeles team created templates for every panel of the aircraft, shipped them to South Africa, and depended on bead artisans from Zimbabwean and Ndebele communities in Johannesburg, KwaZulu-Natal, and Mpumalanga provinces to translate those templates into meticulously beaded panels. These pieces were then returned to Los Angeles to be fitted onto the jet, inside and out. Much of the beadwork used in Ziman’s pieces draws from African culture, especially the bold colors and patterns associated with the Ndebele people. Historically, Ndebele beadwork represented a form of cultural expression and political resistance, with certain patterns and colors carrying coded meaning during colonialism and apartheid.

Today, beaded sculptures of animals are often sold on the streets of Johannesburg, but are frequently dismissed as “tourist craft,” despite the immense skill and symbolism behind them. Ziman sought to restore respect to this art form and highlight its complexity. Many of the artisans employed by Ziman come from Ndebele beadwork collectives such as Anointed Hands, founded by Thenjiwe Pretty Nkogatsi. As she explains, “There’s no Africa without beadwork—it connects.” Although you might miss it, even the interior cockpit is fully beaded—every switch, surface, and panel transformed into a shimmering mosaic of color. At the Museum of Flight, you don’t get a direct view inside, but in the Red Barn’s special exhibition space, you can explore a 3D digital model that offers a full 360-degree look into the cockpit, revealing the meticulous detail and hours of labor embedded in every nook and cranny. In doing so, Ziman shines a new light on this cultural art form and takes a different approach to the ways stories are conveyed through it.

Standing before the beaded MiG-21 at the Museum of Flight, it is impossible not to feel the weight of what the aircraft once was, and what it now represents. The sheer impeccable size of the plane and the immersive exhibit, filled to the brim with captivating films, detailed descriptions, and accompanying works, combine to create a deeply moving experience. As a lover of both art and aerospace engineering, I went into this expecting an exhibit that simply combined those two subjects, but I was given something much more. Ziman not only shows us, but also calls on us to recognize how the past repeats itself, how violence is woven into the systems around us, and how art can interrupt those cycles by redefining the meaning of the very objects that perpetuate them. He could have simply told us all of this through written text, but instead, he created an experience that provokes thought, asks the viewer to meet these ideas halfway, and engage actively with the work. The MiG-21 Project is worthwhile not just for those interested in art or aviation, but for anyone who wants to understand how cultural narratives are made and unmade, and how creativity can expose the complexity of histories we think we already know. 

Lead photo courtesy of The Museum of Flight.

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