Nontsikelelo Veleko

Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko (born 19 August 1977) is a South African photographer most noted for her depiction of black identity, urbanisation and fashion in post-apartheid South Africa. She studied from 1995 to 2003 at the Cape Technikon in Cape Town and attended Luhlaza High School in Khayelitsha. In 1995, she studied graphic design at the Cape Technikon. After moving to Johannesburg, she studied photography at the Market Theatre Photo Workshop (1999–2004), the institution that was organized by David Goldblatt, who provide the formal training to young photographers. This same year, Veleko was nominated for the MTN New Contemporaries Arts Awards. This competition identifies four rising South African artists and selects a winner. Throughout the next couple of years, her work was showcased in various exhibitions throughout South Africa, Europe and Australia.

In 2006, her photographs were part of the group exhibition Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York. This work portrays particularly, defines Veleko's contrats the stereotypes which are associated with gender and race depicting South Africa street style from her series Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder from (2003), which focused on subjects born after 1994, attracted a great deal of attention and international acclaim, shifting previous perceptions of Africa as a whole on an international scale. Veleko explains that she looks at fashion “and how it creates identity, because fashion plays with identity”. In regards to the title of the series, she states: “I thought the way I see beauty and the way I perceive beauty might be different to someone else next to me...So the project is called Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, because for me they are beautiful.” In short, it was clear that images were created by her because of the color choices and facial expressions of that characters held with the viewer. Alongside this, Veleko has also included clothing in her projects "to deliberately challenge assumptions of identity based on appearances and historical background". That same year, her photographs were displayed in the exhibition titled Olvida Quien Soy- Erase Me from Who I Am at the Centro Atlantico de Arte Mordeno in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. During this year, she also received a two-month residency with the International Photographic Research Network (IPRN) in the UK where she explored the notions of work, identity and clothes. This focuses on familiar aspects of her previous work such as fashionable street-goers, primarily younger adults, as well as graffiti and personal spaces. Graffiti, like photography is a form of visual communication. It is a vehicle which informs society about the range of socio-political issues that affect us; it gets people's messages across in a, public, 'in your face' way; it evokes powerful emotion. To me, it is more than merely a visual message...it is poetry...

— Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko, These Words Are Like Swords...

In 2017 Veleko co-curated 'Resist(e) – Printemps Photographique Afrique du Sud 2017' at Gallery NegPos in Nîmes, France with Patrice Loubon of Gallery NegPos. In 2019, her work 'banned nudes,' Les nus interdits, was on exhibit in Les Docks in Aries, France after being shot on the Island of Reunion.

Personal life Veleko, as of 2017, lives and works in France.

Reception In discussion of her photography, Mark Stevens wrote in the New York Magazine Art Review, "It was a shock- an awakening shock- to come upon the bursting contemporary colours worn by the fashion-struck people portrayed by Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko on the streets of Johannesburg". 2007 SCREAM! MUTE! SCREAM!, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa 2008-9 Wonderland, Standard Bank Young Artist Award, national travelling exhibition, including National Arts Festival Grahamstown, Grahamstown; Durban Art Gallery, Durban; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa