Meet Hugo E Silva, a visual artist, stylist, and set designer whose work blends fine art and fashion. With a fresh portfolio and a passion for innovation, Hugo is making huge moves in the creative industry, collaborating with esteemed brands and participating in high-profile events. Hugo’s formal education in fine arts has equipped them with…
The year is 2017, the building is August House. Here, established and baby artists gather ceremoniously to water their artistic gardens into bloom. I’ve been revisiting the day we met, after you ascended from the body on the 11th of August. On the afternoon our worlds first collided, I sat quietly at a tiny desk…
As heavy rain swept across KwaZulu Natal in April 2022 — causing floods and landslides — homes, cars and businesses were destroyed leaving unimaginable damage across all fronts. The whole of KwaZulu Natal was left impacted. While some people were able to replace some lost or damaged items, artists could not do the same. As…
After spending some time reading about African mythologies and our take on spirituality, this body of work was created as a celebration of the coming of a new spirit/guardian angel/ancestor, as well as emphasising to people that we are god-like beings and that God can manifest in human form. The sense of community that can…
Felix Shumba is a self-taught visual artist from Masvingo in Zimbabwe. In this conversation with Barnabas Ticha Muvhuti, Shumba, whose multidisciplinary practices includes figurative drawing and painting, poetry and performance art, talks about his background, his biggest influences and the obstacles he has encountered as an immigrant in South Africa. Let us start with where…
Banele Khoza’s figurative abstraction depicts colourful portraits of the male nude—obscure ghostly figures in a palette of mostly pink and blue. The acrylic pigments are combined and blurred together in fervent brushstrokes that seem to be applied with acute sensitivity, but also a sense of the uninhibited. They bleed and drip into empty spaces, while…
Having fallen in love with the magic created by a never-failing pinhole camera and darkroom, and discovering how she could paint with light and bring mood into her images, Thandiwe Msebenzi found photography to be her unexpected fine art soul mate. Since this initial blossoming of her passion for images, coupled with the desire to…
Warmth, faces, composure, a glare, melanin accentuated —it is all in the lighting. When the light hits my face at just the right angle, all my problems disappear. This simple line sounds frivolous and nonchalant, but it is exactly the kind of care-free attitude that black girls, black women and black bodies have been denied….
Growing up outside of London, the cynosure of transdisciplinary creative Jade Pearl’s practice was engrained in her being from a young age. In her childhood home sustainability was emphasised through conscious living (saving), recycling and even upcycling to aid the family with their financial wellbeing. “I think subconsciously that must have had an effect on…
A moment is frozen in time. The beauty of youth captured. A soft approach with a tender touch. An unquestionable femme gaze. Flowers, low angle shots. Images close to nostalgia reminiscent of the MySpace era. Vibrancy. Colour tones of yellow, blues and pinks. A blown-out kiss. Daria Kobayashi Ritch has become well known in photography,…
Sometimes it pays to wait. Singer-songwriter Msaki and artist Francois Knoetze have been planning to collaborate for years, ever since their time studying Fine Art at Rhodes University. In particular, they wanted to make a video for ‘Dreams’, a beautifully haunting song of memory and regret. After a previous attempt didn’t work due to bad timing, they…
Women and femmes perform multiple forms of labour which are not always recognized as such due to the fact that there is not monetary remuneration for this. This includes emotional labour and household tasks which are seen as the responsibility of femme beings. It seems fitting to write about two women who are taking a…
