Notes

Emerging in the early 2000s, Veleko formed part of a new wave of documentary photographers shunning news in favour of personal projects. Her earliest photos were straight documentary images of pantsula, a highly stylised form of urban dance complemented by elaborate dress. Veleko shortly expanded her interest in fashion and urban identity to focus on Johannesburg’s inner city. “I look at fashion in how it constructs identity and culture and how eventually fashion images are believed to be culture or truth,” she wrote in 2004.¹

Her street portraits of young metropolitans, made in the style of recent English and Japanese fashion photography, generated huge global interest and she was awarded the Standard Bank Artist Award in 2008. This lot forms part of series of self-portraits made in 2005-06, concurrent with her acclaimed urban portraits, and is arguably the best-known example. Aside from declaring her jubilant investment in the scene she documented, Veleko’s self-portraits artfully expanded on an earlier autobiographical series that explored her mixed-race ancestry.

1. Nontsikelelo Veleko (2004), ‘Lulu’s Tie 2002’, in Is Everybody Comfortable? (catalogue), Johannesburg: Market Photo Workshop. Unpaginated.

Exhibited

Standard Bank Young Artists: 25 A Retrospective Exhibition, National Arts Festival, Albany Museum, Grahamstown, 2 July to 11 July 2009; Standard Bank, Johannesburg, 5 August to 19 September 2009.

Goodman Gallery, Nontsikelelo Veleko: Mute!Scream!Mute!, 19 July to 11 August, 2007.

Literature

Storm Janse van Rensburg (ed) (2008) Nontsikelelo Veleko: Wonderland, Standard Bank and Goodman Gallery. Another example from the edition illustrated in colour on page 17.

Nontsikelelo Veleko (2008) Wonderland (catalogue), Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery. Another example from the edition illustrated in colour on page 85.

Emile Maurice (ed) (2009) Standard Bank Young Artists: 25 A Retrospective Exhibition, Standard Bank, another example from the edition illustrated in colour on page 84.

Sue Williamson (2009) South African Art Now, New York: Collins Design, another example from the edition illustrated in colour on page 300.