The chameleon
Musonda “Müs” Kabwe is a 24-year-old Zambian-born, Jozi-bred illustrator and graphic designer.
He graduated from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in 2015 with a bachelor of technology degree in graphic design and was also selected to be a part of the Emerging Creatives Mentorship Programme hosted by the Design Indaba.
In 2017 he worked as a graphic designer for a branding agency but, after six months, he decided to quit his job and pursue his illustration work on his own terms. Kabwe has done work for the likes of Telkom, MTN and FNB and has had his work featured as far afield as Brazil. vector and bitmap illustration. The lifeblood to his work is hybridity. His graphics are bold and often include an interesting interplay between traditional and digital media. This mix is not only reflected in style but also in form as his work often includes short animations and GIFs.
Beyond his commissioned work, Kabwe uses Instagram and his website (musondakabwe.com) to delve into more personal projects. One such project is No Narrativ, a comic that explores existentialism and millennial angst. The comic is not serialised and features diverse characters. A blue mask often appears on the faces of the characters but instead of only masquerading for the world, the characters often cannot see themselves.
No Narrativ has received positive reviews and has been featured by Design Indaba, the Grolsch Canvas Gallery,and internationally on United Kingdom-based blog BetterShared.
In December last year Kabwe had a solo exhibition at Gallery 57 in Johannesburg, entitled Welcome Home, in which he showcased a wide variety of graphic prints in his signature hybrid style.
This hybridity was also reflected in the opening of the event itself, with Kabwe’s artistic and branding background colliding in a beautiful way.
Kabwe has recently teamed up with Wade Moonsamy, 23, and Samu Belle, 25 — ranked first and third in the 2017 Loeries Designer rankings — to start BCKRDS.
BCKRDS is a Johannesburg-based media house. Their first project was an ode to Jozi, the city that moulded them, and is aptly named 011. They produced a line of T-shirts that pay homage to the different parts of the city they grew up in.
But Kabwe is not giving up on his freelance work under his illustration studio, Müs.
Apter is working with Nik Rabinowitz on his upcoming one-man show, titled Dry White, and also worked with Nina Hastie, who recently performed at the Goliath Comedy Club in Melrose Arch.
“The thing about comedy is you don’t sit and write jokes in a vacuum,” she says. “I sit with people and work with them — you do that as comedians anyway. When putting a show together it helps to have another ear.”
Stand-up, which Apter began doing about two years ago, is the next frontier in her career. “It was something I wanted to do for a long time but was too scared. In 2015 I met Jason and Donovan Goliath and they encouraged me to go on stage,” she says, recalling her first gig at the Pop Art theatre in Maboneng, Johannesburg.
Asked how bad (or how good) it was, Apter says she had aimed to be at least good enough to have the confidence to return to the mic.
“I don’t think that anything could have stopped me,” she recalls. “Because I’m older and experienced and have done a few things, I knew I was not going to be knockout brilliant, but I needed to be good enough to be able to try again. It’s so hard to be good at anything the first time round. In comedy, people bomb on the first try and never come back. I was not going to judge myself until I had done it at least 20 times.”
This year, Apter counts getting Acting Out made into a television series as one of her main goals. The hilarious pilot she wrote and directed recounts a night gone wrong for a middle-aged protagonist who wakes up from an unsuccessful attempt at getting laid.
“In the stand-up space, my goal is to get better and be more consistent. The point of doing a show is to get to do the next one.”