An Afternoon with Vicky Sheelongo

Vicky is a young artist from Namibia dedicated to fashion-editorial photography, creative filmmaking and multidisciplinary art, whose transformative multi-level approach is in constant motion and evolution.

Vicky started to connect and learn on her own how to use the camera and the software during her studies in Cape Town in television production techniques, with a major in cinematography. This practice allows her to manipulate images driven by her innate sense of creative expression. Indeed, a huge passion for fashion was growing in her, and she got more and more captivated by the powerful imagery of this ever-changing compelling world. Therefore, she started to take pictures, create settings and dress her models: in the middle of this process she realised she was telling a story, but – she asked herself – what story? Her art and journey focuses on trying to answer this essential question by digging and exploring untouched territories.

In bringing her creative vision to life, she says that sometimes she doesn’t have the finished idea of what she’s gonna shoot: “I connect to the subjects to see what’s happening, and when I start editing I see something that speaks to me”. The artist lets herself flow within the stream of her own narratives full of dreamy colours, alternative expressions and outlandish perspectives.

Behind the series “Womanity” she hides the face of every South African woman who was going through a very rough life at the time of gender-violence. Vicky wanted to infuse women’s empowerment by creating value within her artworks and marking a trail of women’s energy and the effective consequences of what was going on.

Vicky is also working on an African online magazine ‘Waabi Saabi’, named after the Japanese phrase that represents the aesthetic concept of finding beauty in imperfections, which she envisions as a powerful way of telling stories as they are, in opposition to other magazines that only represent airbrushed and perfect images distant from the real impermanent beauty of life.

Find out more about Vicky and her artworks.
By adding her profile to your art-list, you can follow her work or visit her studio during your next trip to South Africa!