Along the bustling main road of Woodstock, a park sits nestled amidst the erratic energy of minibus taxis, speeding cars, and people weaving in and out of the city’s pulse. The backdrop to this unassuming space is a fantastical mural an imagined landscape of rolling green fields, waterfalls, and castles an apparition of a former Cape Colony. This painted dreamscape, rather than reflecting the lived reality of Cape Town, embodies a fallacy: an idealized, romanticized vision of the city’s past.
It is against this backdrop that A Hopeful Love was born. Originally shot for Vogue Italia under the theme Reframing History, the project invites us into a moment of childlike imagination, where history is not a rigid structure but a fluid space open for reclamation. In the images, siblings Rudo, 10, and Kupa, 12, step into a world of dress-up, running into the light of the setting sun. With silk ribbons, picked flowers, and ornate attire, they carry an aura of quiet confidence resolute, proud, and unapologetic in their Black love.
The act of reframing is central to the narrative. Colonial murals such as the one in Woodstock serve as tools of erasure, presenting a version of history where Black life is peripheral, if acknowledged at all. Yet here, within this constructed setting, the siblings assert their presence, their dignity, and their agency. The contrast between the painted illusion and the truth of their existence becomes a powerful dialogue on memory, history, and self-definition.
For me, A Hopeful Love is also deeply personal. In capturing Rudo and Kupa’s bond, I find myself re-membering piecing together memories of my own relationship with my sister. There is a shared language in siblinghood, an unspoken understanding that carries us through childhood and beyond. This project is an extension of that love, a testament to the ways we hold each other in a world that often seeks to forget us.
Since its creation, A Hopeful Love has found a home in spaces dedicated to challenging dominant narratives. Exhibited at the V&A Museum in London, in the Open Plot group show at THK Gallery, at the FNB Art Fair with Church Projects in 2023, and in Sibadala Sibancane, an exhibition presented by The Manor in partnership with Strauss & Co, the work continues to engage with audiences in conversations on representation, memory, and reclamation. It is a story of innocence and resilience, a love letter to the past and the future, and a reminder that history is not merely what is painted for us it is what we choose to see, to reimagine, and to claim as our own.