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Justice Mukheli, the art of opportunities.
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Multidisciplinary artist from South Africa, Justice Mukheli in not afraid to go beyond the boundaries and follow his dreams to make the most incredible of them come true. Commercially successful Justice the activist aims to show the real face of Africa to the world where the prejudices still prevail.
Justine Mukheli exclusively for FXLB New York Mag.
When and how did your creative journey start?
It started when I was maybe 9 or 10 years old. I once saw my dad drawing a picture. I thought it was really good! And in seeing that picture I thought, if he can draw, then I can obviously draw too. And so throughout my school career, I moved forward with this confidence just from seeing my dad draw and believing I had that capacity too. From there I moved through various forms of creative self-expression – drawing, skating, music, street art, photography, painting and directing. I think all of these things shaped me in some way in the work I do now.
What drives you as a creative?
All of my artistic disciplines come from the same place and often feed off one another. My painting is informed by my photography. My photography taught me about lighting and composition and how to tell a story through a single frame. This knowledge I then take into my directing. Each discipline is an extension of ways that I can express myself. When one medium feels limited I can take that full expression into another medium. The themes are similar and come from the same place.
What drives me as a creative is contributing to my generation’s collective purpose and collective intention to capture and archive our times and the things we go through – our challenges, our victories and things that as a collective of artists we are unpacking in this time.
In one of your interviews you said that “without advertising I would not have become photographer & film maker”. How did advertising bring you to photography and filmmaking?
Before advertising, my worldview was limited to that which I had had access to up to that point. Advertising gave me access to many different disciplines that I did not know existed before that. Working with so many different practitioners and needing to find varied solutions really opened up my mind to what was possible for myself. I also found so much interest in these spaces and really enjoyed myself there, so I wanted to push myself to grow in these spaces.
One of your early projects was reimagining fashion in South Africa. Can you tell us about this project?
Collectively with my brother, I See a Different You was born from looking at the world and how it represents itself through fashion. Specifically we looked at Italians and their global voice within fashion and how they presented themselves. When we saw that we asked ourselves why we didn’t have such a voice and a presence and why we didn’t represent ourselves to the world. While unpacking this through photography and our blog, we found that photography came with a larger purpose, which was dismantling the stereotypes of how the world looked at us as Africans. We worked to dismantle the stereotypes by showing ourselves authentically to the backdrop of where we were from. Showing both the reality of where we were from but also who we truly were as Africans. This composition of our fashion against the backdrop of where we were from created images that hadn’t been seen at that time.
What does art represent to you: a necessity, a way to transfer a message, self-expression?
All of the above, as well as a way to process my lived experiences.
Where do you draw the inspiration?
I draw most of my inspiration from my upbringing, my community, and my lived experiences. The history of our country inspires me so much too. Especially looking at how incredibly brave the youth of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s were in South Africa and how their voice was heard globally before the times of instant communication we have now. They turned the tide in an unimaginable way. It makes me feel that we have no excuse now because we have so much more access than those who came before us. Our voices can really be heard. I don’t take this for granted. This is what inspires me a lot to push through and forward.
Modern masculinity is one of the themes which we can trace in your art world. Has the perception of it changed over the years?
I was raised in a community in which gender roles were strictly defined. Men had
to be bold, strong and divorce themselves from their emotions. I was told not to cry; or I would be given something to cry about. Similarly, women had to perform their gender norms. And as for the spaces between genders, we spoke nothing of that. There came a point for me where I realized that so much of who I was, was based on what had been prescribed to me. And it was very important for me to get to know myself aside from these structures and predetermined roles I grew up with. I realized that I was performing what I had been taught was masculinity regardless of whether these ways of being and values was something that aligned with my truth. My perception and experience of masculinity changes all the time and I think it will always be changing.
The reality of the country and place you are coming from is sometimes very different from what the media worldwide show to us. Do you think that the purpose of art and creatives is to show the real beauty which lays beyond this cliché?
How much do you get yourself involved into digital art?
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