Emerging Creative: Lebogang Mogul

Lebogang Mabusela is a Gauteng based visual artist. Mabusela is a multidisciplinary artist, with a current intent on mastering monotype printing. She holds a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand and refers to herself as a monotypebabe, zinequeen, paper artist and sculptor.

Her work draws on capitalism and consumer products to interrogate the idea of the art object and value in thingumabobs, while strategically criticising the patriarchy by making work that subverts the gender norms perpetuated by Sepedi-Setswana proverbs and anecdotes collected from her childhood memories and experiences.

The young artist also establshed 'Makoti', a bridal gift shop that sells 'Makoti Technologies™', which are guns made from paper. In assigning these objects with functions She draws on black feminist theory and observed behaviour from rogue and irreverent women who challenge patriarchy in how they live everyday.

The guns are a materialisation of feminist theory and radical killjoy behaviour as tools that dismantle gender norms and patriarchy and also grant women mythical superpowers and enhance desires.

Makoti puts her practice in the realm of performance, sculpture/installation and printmaking. Mabusela's work also extends to making monotype prints that use the doily also known as place mats to challenge the idea of the black woman logic in the domestic space, but also introduce women such as 'bo mama ba rona' as conscious and unconscious gatekeepers and perpetuators of patriarchy and also black culture. In the brand of Makoti Technologies™ the prints do not act in the same way as the guns but as typical artwork that happens to occupy the space of the shop.

Her latest and most successful work is the Makoti: A Bridal gifts shop performance and installation at The Latitudes Art Fair.