This is street artist, illustrator, and founder of Mother Tongue Creative House Karabo ‘Poppy’ Moletsane who showed off her skills at the opening of BUDX, Miami Super Bowl Weekend LIV earlier this year. Karabo used her Afro-futuristic visuals to transform white Nike Airforce 1 sneakers into a cool collection of sneakers that captured the essence of hip hop culture and its relationship with sneakers.
Karabo took inspiration from the BudX event by incorporating the black; red and white ‘King of Beers’ colours into her designs. “This was an amazing experience to share and showcase a distinctive African design aesthetic to other equally amazing artists and creatives from all over the world. To combine my love of sneakers and pay homage to hip-hop culture as an important element in my design style, and tell a story from an African perspective at an event like BUDX, which celebrates Kings of Culture is a once in a lifetime opportunity,” said Karabo.
She also designed the graphics on Soweto’s famous Orlando Towers for Soweto Gold Superior Golden Lager and created a Google Doodle for International Women’s Day in 2018. Her other big-name campaigns include working with Apple on its Red Campaign, being asked to paint a mural in the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, creating a mural for the Facebook Africa office as well as doing work for Zoo Lake, Woolworths and Nike.
With so many accomplishments at such a young age, its no wonder the Vereeniging-born artist was the winner of the Next Big Thing award at the 2018 SA Style awards. This is only the beginning for this talented young creative.
