Five Female Creatives You Should Know

August 29, 2021by HOMEMAKERS Editor0 comments

We discover our top female creatives making waves all over the world.

Photographer Sarah de Pina

Sarah is known for capturing the essence of a space. No matter the location or size, she has a magical way of recreating a space beautifully behind her lens. Her specialties are in interiors, food and architecture. You may have stumbled across Sarah’s work on Instagram. Her work has been featured in ELLE DECOR Japan and Elle Decor South Africa.

She captures many products too, from luxury candles and light fittings to beauty products and interior design. She knows how to convey the “hello there” from a product in a single photograph.

Sarah discovered photography in her early teens when she started documenting her family holidays. She decided to pursue photography as a career after university and has been working in the industry for 20 years. Her work has also been featured on Dezeen and Wallpaper Online. She is the go-to photographer for award-winning, furniture design studio Mash.T

Visit Sarah’s website.

Fashion Designer Palesa Makubung

Mantsho. Remember the name. This is the African trend dictator, Palesa Makubung’s fashion label. She is known for her contemporary creations with an African flair. She knows how to work with fabric and her unique use of textiles and textures sets her apart. High quality garments, made by a striking and super-talented Palesa.

Mantsho by Palesa Mokubung is the first design house in South Africa to collaborate with global giant H&M. The Mantsho x H&M collection was sold in H&M’s flagship and online stores worldwide. She was honoured with a “Lifetime Achievement Award” at Free State fashion week, received a GQ best-dressed award and recognised by the Carol Bouwer Mbokodo Award for her outstanding and valuable contribution in the field of Arts and Culture in South Africa. Mantsho is a regular and favourite at South African Fashion Week year after year, never disappointing the people trending and blogging from the “frow” (front row).

Watch Mantsho’s Spring Summer 21 Collection here.

Visual Artist Yolanda Mazwana

Yolanda Mazwana is a self-taught visual artist based in Johannesburg, who specialises in painting. She is represented by Kalishnikovv gallery (that’s a pretty big deal in the South African art scene). Her work touches on the topics of mental illness, popular culture, phobias and relationships. Her work can be described as abstract expressionism and symbolism. Think Frank Stella and Jackson Pollock fused with an uncomfortable undertone. You can’t stop looking once your eyes lock with one of Yolanda’s works.

The After Midnight Series is the Artist’s most recent and a delve into the unknown and our underlying fears and notorious obsessions with the obscure. In an interview with Between 10 and 5, she explains the body of work as, “The purpose of the After Midnight series was to discover the inner thoughts and ideas of how far I can take the creative process of my subconscious at night. I started with these contortionist blob drawings and now they’re evolving into paintings and are starting to take on a surreal, expressionist approach. I’m quite interested to see what more can come out of it moving forward”.

Music Journalist Tecla Ciolfi

Tecla Ciolfi is known for her website Texx and the City. She has been a vital instrument to the music industry for over 13 years. Her latest project, the podcast Texx Talks is the latest and popular project in the music biz. After building a portfolio writing for various SA publications, Tecla spent two years editing local music magazine Your LMG. It was around this time that she also became Editor and Marketing Manager at Deezer in South Africa which she held for four years, building the streaming the service’s music catalogue and running label relations. Now, she uses all her hard-earned knowledge about streaming to educate unsigned and underground artists as to the FAQs surrounding all streaming services.

Tecla is also one of Mail & Guardian’s Top 200 Young South Africans (2015), House & Leisure’s Rising Stars (2015) and one of Memeburn’s 50 Most Prominent SA Journalists. Tecla has grown Texx and the City into a well-curated music site. It’s home to a team of young contributors who are as passionate about music as she is.

Chef Zola Nene

Zola Nene’s food journey started shortly after a two-year stay in the UK. London to be specific. During her studies at the Institute of Culinary Arts in Stellenbosch, she had the opportunity to work with some top local chefs. In her third year, she went on to perfect her trade as a food assistant at a leading food and lifestyle magazine. This is where her love for food styling became prominent.

In 2019, Nene scooped the Best in the World award in the TV category at the prestigious Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for her second cookbook titled Simply Zola. Nene later joined British chef, restaurateur and writer, Gordon Ramsay, in the second season of National Geographic’s series, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted.

Find more inspiration in our August magazine issue.