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Lerato Motau, Product Owner
 


Mahlatse Artworks

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Vilakazi Street is the one street that no visitor to Soweto ever misses. It is the street that two Nobel Peace Prize winners (former President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu) have called home.

At the top of the famous road is the memorial to Hector Pieterson, the teenager gunned down by police just as the 1976 Soweto student revolt was breaking out, the revolt that set South Africa inexorably on the path to the democracy it achieved almost two decades later.

Because of its iconic tourist appeal, Vilakazi Street is nowadays the hub of several excellent B&Bs and restaurants. Today tourists from all over the world stay in guesthouses in and around Vilakazi Street, stroll its streets in the late afternoons and evenings, chatting to locals and dining in the nearby restaurants and taverns. All that was missing from Vilakazi Street, until recently, was an attraction for lovers of the fine arts. Enter Lerato Motau, an avant-garde artist from Orlando West, a highly-trained, exceptionally creative 33-year-old whose works can be viewed (and bought) right there on Vilakazi Street.

Lerato’s large canvasses are bold and riotously colourful, inspired by the people, particularly women, around her in Soweto. Many of them are multimedia works, with Lerato cleverly incorporating fabric pieces. Taking inspiration from her late mentor, Katlehongartist Martin Tose, the people in Lerato’s paintings lack facial features, a trademark of her work.

Trained at the Johannesburg Art Foundation, Lerato has been painting professionally since 1999. She has exhibited extensively, most recently in Finland, and her art has been bought by a number of South African banks and the Botswana mining giant, Debswana. Inspired to become an artist while still at school, Lerato now teaches art and an appreciation of art at a school in Soweto.

She says living in Soweto means that she is never short of inspiration. “We’re a mini New York; we’ve got everything here and there is always something happening in Soweto. Before they come here, some people expect to find elephants in the streets and they’re amazed at all the things we have to offer, at all the history and heritage there is in Soweto.”

Tourism, Lerato adds, is vital to her business because “it means that my clients are not just from Johannesburg or Soweto. Thanks to tourism I have relationships with people from many different countries.” It was, in fact, through meeting a Finnish woman touring South Africa that she was invited to exhibit in that country.

Lerato says she has already experienced the benefits of being part of TEP’s Soweto Cluster. “We get to network and share ideas and we help each other’s businesses, to give tourists a much richer experience,” she says. “Some of the B&B owners tell their guests about me. They then phone up and make an appointment, the people come over and we have a really enjoyable cultural session together. I’m happy because I get to meet more people, and the B&B owners are happy because their clients appreciate them arranging the visit.”

Painting is not all this entrepreneur and artist does. Recently she branched out into sewing. “I had wanted to become a fabric designer. The making of my ‘friendship’ skirts began when a close friend passed away and I made a skirt in her memory,” Lerato explains. “I then decided to make skirts for some of my other friends, celebrating who they are now. Each skirt is different, just as every person is different. Every one I make has its own personality.” Like her painting, Lerato’s skirts are vibrant and colourful (she describes the colours she uses as her “Mashangani colours” – a reference to the Tsonga/Shangaan people of Mozambique and Mpumalanga) and their colourful dress.

Lerato works from her mother’s house on Vilakazi Street in Orlando West but she dreams of having her own gallery one day. Until then, visitors to Soweto are welcome to her mother’s home.
 
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