Artist 331
PR$DNT HONEY aka PR$DNT MONEY
Rendani Nemakhavhani Monetary Art
Rendani Nemakhavhani is a South African illustrator and artist who creates vibrant illustrations exploring her experience of the world. Her work celebrates womenhood and Blackness. She wishes to push the boundaries of representation of women in media.
She is inspired by the lives that Black people lead and aspire to have. She celebrates the value and potential she sees in herself and her community as well embracing her inner badass.
Since 2014 Nemakhavhani has been remaking herself into a series of fictional characters that are strong and joyful in her work that are familiar to herself and to other South African women. Nemakhavhani alter ego is called PR$DNT HONEY.
When discussing how representation of graphic designers and the aim of her alter ego Rendani Nemakhavhani discusses, “I really struggled with my thesis, because I was writing about South African graphic designers, and I wanted to write about Black South African graphic designers in particular.”
She continues, “I couldn’t find anything that was written in books that I could use as references.” Through her art practice Nemakhavhani strives to create change.
In her current project ‘Ghetto Fabulous’ Nemakhavhani turns her visual storytelling illustrations into a collection of printed satin textiles. She also explores turning her illustrations into NFTs and zines. She specifically took her ‘run me my cheque’ illustrations of created money.
At the Investic Art Fair talk where Nemakhavhani was a panelist in the NFT conversation she expanded on the phenomenon of creating themed monetary art and in turn creating monetary success from her curated and created money.
She has begun exploring the NFT sphere with SuperRare (an NFT network). As she explores the digital sphere has also made her work functional and more accessible by printing the illustrations on textiles.
She expands on her printed textiles, “Ghetto Fabulous is a body of work that speaks to the relationship that Black people have with fabric and aims to present my illustrations in a way that feels familiar and less intimidating.”
Nemakhavhani explains. “Stretch satin is a textile that feels and looks luxurious. It can function as a Babushka, a durag, a boob-tube, a doek, even a piece of art that you let live in a frame. Its function is to elevate your aesthetics. It’s meant to be used.”
“The complex narrative around luxury and what that means in the context of Blackness makes sense for the person that I am. I don’t fall within the one percent, but I can look like it,” Nemakhavhani continues. “In trying to account for where this part of me comes from I remember Sunday mornings in Chiawelo. Going to church was mandatory. Dressing up for it, even more so. In preparation for Christmas and New Year’s gatherings with the family, our folks make sure we’re dressed to the nines. This is our tradition. We have so little, yet we are so much. And thus, we are ghetto fabulous.”
“This is a language I’ve learned and have understood outside of the context of wealth. It is spoken fluently by my mother, who learnt it from her mother, who learnt it from her mother and on and on. It’s as though our genetics are extended by the way in which we present ourselves. I love it here.”
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