ANNA is SA’s first locally produced and environmentally friendly sanitary range and this award is another step in its mission to embolden and empower women.
“Latitudes Online and ANNA Pure Organic are proud to announce that Lerato Nkosi is the winner of the 2022 ANNA Award. As the winner of the prize, Lerato receives R100,000 cash, a one-month residency at PLAAS #inplaasvan in Franschhoek, a profile on Latitudes Online, and a year’s supply of ANNA products.”
The winner was chosen from among the 12 finalists by the ANNA selection committee: Makgati Molebatsi — Arts adviser, Curator and Senior Art Specialist, Aspire Art Auctions, Refiloe Mpakanyane — Weekend Breakfast host on Talk Radio 702; Candice Chirwa — menstruation activist, speaker and academic; Marianne Fassler — Fashion Designer, Leopard Frock; Jo-Ann Strauss — SA model, public speaker and businessperson and Nina Carew — curator of Latitudes.
Lerato Nkosi on winning the inaugural ANNA-Latitudes art award
Mpumalanga-born artist Lerato Nkosi's work examines the roles, intricacies, influences and multifaceted identities of women
Image: Lerato Nkosi
Visual artist Lerato Nkosi was announced last week as the winner of the inaugural ANNA-Latitudes Online fine art competition for emerging female artists. The enthusiastic and mature artist works in the medium of stamps and ink in her explorations of existing as a woman.
Image: Supplied
Nkosi originally hailed from Mpumalanga and then studied for a fashion and design degree at the Tshwane University of Technology before pursuing creative jobs in Cape Town. Her dynamic practice examines the roles, intricacies, influences and multifaced identities of women in both vulnerable, sheltered and influential spaces.
Nkosi’s childhood has shaped her practice: “I was raised by my mom and my grandmother in a village called Swalala, they were very strong role models in my life,” she says.
“My grandmother was a single mom of eight kids while her husband was a migrant worker in Johannesburg trying to make ends meet. My mom’s siblings have turned out to be okay based on how my grandmother moulded and shaped them.”
With strong female role models, she uses research and provocative investigations to “grapple with ideologies of femininity and how our mothers shape and mould each and every individual. “I investigate the role of a mother or a woman in a child's life and how they end up being in society. I believe that most of the men and women that are influential in the world are raised by women.”
Image: Lerato Nkosi
Image: Lerato Nkosi
ANNA is SA’s first locally produced and environmentally friendly sanitary range and this award is another step in its mission to embolden and empower women.
“Latitudes Online and ANNA Pure Organic are proud to announce that Lerato Nkosi is the winner of the 2022 ANNA Award. As the winner of the prize, Lerato receives R100,000 cash, a one-month residency at PLAAS #inplaasvan in Franschhoek, a profile on Latitudes Online, and a year’s supply of ANNA products.”
The winner was chosen from among the 12 finalists by the ANNA selection committee: Makgati Molebatsi — Arts adviser, Curator and Senior Art Specialist, Aspire Art Auctions, Refiloe Mpakanyane — Weekend Breakfast host on Talk Radio 702; Candice Chirwa — menstruation activist, speaker and academic; Marianne Fassler — Fashion Designer, Leopard Frock; Jo-Ann Strauss — SA model, public speaker and businessperson and Nina Carew — curator of Latitudes.
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Finalist Sinalo Ngcaba is the winner of the Audience Award, for which Latitudes received 2,767 votes from the public, the organisers said in a media release.
Nkosi has only recently focused on art as a career. “I’m a freelance stylist and a full-time artist. Within the period of lockdown and isolation, we were all forced to go back to just ourselves. I'm glad that happened because I felt like I was me again. I started really focusing on art and I was doing something I really believed in and I wanted to do with most of my time,” she said.
Her research-based practice uses the mediums of ink and stamps alongside text to create complex and emotive portraits.
Image: Lerato Nkosi
Image: Lerato Nkosi
“I focus on a specific book or interest before I embark on a body of work. For the ANNA award works, I was concentrating on Bell Hooks at that time, I read All About Love. From that book and the text, I delved into her upbringing with her parents and how that has shaped her to be who she is, whether it's good or not. I think that in her case it was good because there were times when, as a child, it was questionable how her parents did things, but her mom was always the comfort that the dad was not. I also pick up on the text as well — certain words that strike me, I pick up and I use as a part of the stamps,” says Nkosi.
The award, and subsequent recognition, is a “direction changer” for the young artist who believes her work has transcended her name in recognisability. She says that “now more people are aware of the work that I do and that I exist as well. I have felt that my works exist outside of me, lots of people know why work and my techniques but they don’t know who the artist is.”
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