#WomensMonth | Bookmarks' Rising Star Sibuyiselwe Nhlangwini is showing up and taking up space

This year’s Bookmark Awards Rising Star, The Odd Number's Sibuyiselwe Nhlangwini, talks about showing up and taking up space (Image supplied)

“I will keep showing up in spaces, and not diminish my womanhood, and I want women to keep creating spaces where women's voices aren't just included, but they lead.”

Not your average creative, Nhlangwini grew up with the twin influences of the creative (her father is a fine art painter) and the academic (he is also an academic), and while her natural progression was to be an artist, her desire to change the world, led to her studying politics at Nelson Mandela University in the Eastern Cape.

She says she fell into graphic design “by accident” after her first year. But her goal to change the world was not totally forgotten as she entered the Loeries Young Student Challenge, where she had to do work for the United Nations - “I always wanted to work for them!” – on a gender-related issue.

She won a Student Loeries for the project that year.

Then, after working as a junior lecturer at the university for a year, she decided she wanted more, so she packed up, got on the N2 and headed for Johannesburg.

“I have had to navigate this academic side of myself and then this creative side of myself, and then at some point I merged them”.

This specific background and where she comes from mean she is not the conventional creative.

An intentional path

Taking up the opportunities offered to her has been a very intentional process.

One of these has been being part of the Loeries Youth Committee and taking up the position as chair of the Committee.

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“My mandate at the Loeries Youth Committee is literally to be more inclusive, and we have done this by opening the resources of the Committee to a broader number of young creatives in the industry.

Another opportunity was the Open Chair event at Loeries last year.

She says it was the best experience. “I went back to the hotel afterwards and cried because I was happy.

“It was just such an affirming opportunity for me to kind of have those interactions and see people I admire.”

She adds that it is important for young Black women like her to see Black women in leadership roles.

“I think of Nedbank’s Khensani Nobanda and Open Chair founder and creative Suhana Gordhan, and I am grateful to be surrounded by these powerful women and that they exist in my life.

“You look at them and they did it, and so can you, and then you want to do the same for the next generation of women.

"Sometimes when you are around the boys’ club and you are around strong, phenomenal men, you tend to forget that there are these brilliant women who are doing brilliant things."

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Homage to where she came from

As a woman from the Eastern Cape, she says her mandate is to continuously pay homage to her people.

Being from the Eastern Cape, she knows there is not a lot of investment in that province in the creative sector, so like many young people, she left to fulfil their creative potential.

“Yet, the Eastern Cape offers a different understanding of the world and a different Black experience, and we need this diversity to integrate into the industry more to make it more inclusive.”

“You always find inspiration from people who come from Soweto. They're so patriotic to Soweto. Everything about them is “I come from there”.

“I want to be able to be that for young people in the Eastern Cape, in particular, the young women."

She adds that there needs to be more opportunities and resources poured into bringing in people from different provinces, and not just people in Joburg into the industry.

“Because the Black experience is so wide, it's so vast, and you need those voices in the room.”

She hopes to return to the province in the long term and build a creative community.

Women’s Month: A call to action

Women’s Day and Month are tough ones for her.

“It is a day to honour the woman who came before us who fought and marched and made it possible for us to stand where we are today,” she says.

But, she adds, it’s also a reminder of how much work is still left for us to truly be equal and to be recognised as equal counterparts.

For her, this makes it less of a celebration and more of a call to action.

“We make events out of historical moments, but outside of this, outside of the pretty posts on Instagram, how can we be actionable? How can we do things that are kind of tangible?

“I feel like we have become performative in our activism for womanhood, while it should be about tangible structural change.

“It's become a nice celebration and not a let's get down and dirty and be in the rooms and make the structural changes.

“That said, it will always be an important time to me, despite my complicated feelings about it.”

And she says she will celebrate her womanhood every opportunity she gets.

“Let Women’s Month be more; it should be about women's empowerment throughout the year, and it must be tangible with results so that we can also tap into our divine, feminine power and womanhood."

The future

“Oh, you know, I'm going to take over the world,” she laughs… “ I don't know, I thought of owning an agency, but I think I just want to be a force in the industry, whatever package that comes in, but I do want to be a leader and a pioneer in the industry and an icon.

“I think I have something to offer the industry, whether it’s doing great work in an agency or being a corporate baddie.

“I do not know what it will be, but I know it is going to be incredibly special!”