Emerging Creative: Bontle Juku

Bontle Juku AKA Thee artistic mind is a South African visual artist and photographer who lives and works in Pretoria, South Africa. Her work, which is influenced by her love of poetry and spirituality, explores narratives and sociopolitical discourse surrounding the existence of the black body.

Outside of her more conceptual work she also creates content focused on fashion photography, which is another growing passion. In her fashion photography, she still mainly focuses on different elements and the African fashion industry and often juxtapositions with allusions to European renaissance art and other Eurocentric aesthetics. In doing so she is still trying to create conversations surrounding African standards of beauty as opposed to those brought on by European ideologies.

Through her narratives she always aims to answer questions surrounding her views and experiences of lives of black people mainly focusing on the narratives in the African context. Her urban minimalist, stylistic aesthetic is unmistakably her trademark.

Juku purchased her first camera at the age of 15 and has been experimenting with conceptual photography ever since, especially that which carries a strong story or narrative. She mainly produces portrait photography and the portrayal and narratives surrounding Africans.

She recently completed a collaborative photographic project titled 'My Skin My Logo' which gained a lot of social media traction and earned her a feature in Iqhawe Magazine.