WONDERLAND
STANDARD BANK YOUNG ARTIST 2008 VISUAL ARTS
WONDERLAND - A PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION BY NONTSIKELELO VELEKO STANDARD BANK YOUNG ARTIST 2008
THE 2ND PHOTOGRAPHER TO BE AWARDED THIS AWARD
9TH JUNE
STANDARD BANK ART GALLERY
SIMMONDS STREET
JOHANNESBURG
The Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art has been awarded to Nontsikelelo Veleko (30), known as 'Lolo' to everyone.
Visual art nowadays is a discipline that knows no boundaries with dance and photography forming integral parts of this diverse medium. Lolo is only the second photographer to win this award but her 'art through the lens' has achieved world recognition with her early project entitled www.notblackenough.lolo, which explored perceptions in South Africa of mixed heritage, using clothes as critical props to deliberately challenge assumptions of identity based on appearances and historical background.
Lolo has been at the receiving end of comments such as "You are too thin for a black girl, or you don't walk like a black girl" - all coming from black people. Lolo became aware that people judge you for what you look like and not for who you are. She took photographs of herself with a wig on which made her look 'English' and 'high and mighty'. She calls her work fun but interspersed with many layers.
Veleko loves her urban environment and the people in it and named one of her projects "Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder". Here she captures colourful people wearing colourful clothes that don't match, but she calls it 'street fashion' and represents something of the lives of the people she is photographing. "I look at fashion and how it creates identity, because fashion plays with identity," she explains. "That's how I look at fashion in South Africa, it's fun and it's like play - my clothes aren't really me, I just have a style and I have fun."
Overseas critics have said "It was a shock - an awakening shock - to come upon the bursting contemporary colours worn by the fashion-struck people portrayed by Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko on the streets of Johannesburg." - Mark Stevens in New York Magazine Art Review.
