Cape Town - Google is celebrating International Women’s Day by examining 12 important themes through the work of 12 extraordinary women artists - including South Africa's own Karabo Poppy Moletsane.
Centred around the themes Adventure, Audacity, Chance, Connection, Growth, Heal, Home, Love, Possible, Strength, Together and Trust, each Doodle tells a powerful story.
In the Doodle ‘Audacity’, Moletsane has introduced a woman into a traditional male ritual setting. The gif, called ‘Ntsoaki’s Victory’, tells the story of Ntsoaki, who is destined to live counter-culturally and asks to join the male coming of age ritual of lion-wrestling.
Moletsane, who is based on Pretoria, is a illustrator, graphic designer and street artist. Examples of her work can be seen at the Nike Football Training Centre in Soweto and the community basketball courts at Zoo Lake. She collaborated on Woolworths' Valentine’s Day campaign in February, creating an artwork using roses in an unexpected manner at the Sandton City store.
She has also done work for the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, featuring massively scaled up portraits of people she met on the streets of Johannesburg and Pretoria.
Moletsane says her careeer highlight is a toss up between having Bill Gates tweet some of her illustrations and painting a mural that appeared in the Grammy-nominated music video Makeba by JAIN.