MEGA-WORK FOR JOBURG’S WOMEN
Hennessy’s global artwork campaign has taken off in the City of Gold
ý Over the past decade, the French cognac brand Hennessy has been collaborating with international artists to produce its Very Special Limited Edition range of bottles. Many of the artists chosen come from the grittier creative scene, including, for example, tattoo king Scott Campbell and graffiti artist Futura.
These artists usually design a bottle for the project and, in some cases, paint murals in select cities like New York and Chicago. Joburg is one of the cities chosen for this project — and it has now received its third such mural.
You can see why. With is grimy streets and walls masked in tags and monikers, Jozi’s inner city is in many ways reminiscent of 1970s New York, where the graffiti subculture was born. Unbeknown to many, over the past decade the City of Gold has become its own version of an urban art stronghold — and the ideal place for the Hennessy campaign.
For this latest project, Hennessy has called on the services of someone who is both a South African and the project’s first woman artist, street-turned-studio-artist
Faith XLVII.
Her work, a multistorey tribute to the women of Joburg, is painted in a vivid array of oranges and reds on Smit Service Road in Braamfontein, close to Wits University.
Delayed because of Covid, she has only just made it to the streets of Braamfontein to complete her mega-piece.
And she’s thrilled to have done it. “There is an electricity in the air, and a mix of cultures that creates a vibrancy that is so specific and unique,” she says. “I love the people of Joburg; it’s a rough, challenging place to live in and that gives you a kind of realness and directness that I appreciate.”
This is the third and final tribute piece in Joburg in the Hennessy murals trilogy.
In 2014, one of the world’s premier street artists, Shepard Fairey — known for the Hope poster that came to represent Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — also visited the city. His famous Braamfontein work features
Nelson Mandela and the text
“The Purple Shall Govern” — referencing the 1989 antiapartheid protest in Cape Town, where demonstrators turned a water cannon filled with purple dye back onto the apartheid police, dyeing them a vivid shade of violet.
In 2018, Portuguese street artist Vhils created an artwork in the Maboneng precinct featuring Yvonne Chaka Chaka. The artist chose Chaka Chaka because she’s both a Unicef ambassador and works with her own Princess of Africa Foundation. He used a mallet, chisel, drill bits and jackhammer to break into the wall and create an image exposing paint, plaster and dirt.
By exposing these layers in his trademark style, he wanted to reveal “Joburg’s history, make the invisible visible and hopefully make us think about our public space”.
A cynic might deride this as simply an international alcohol brand carrying out a clever branding campaign, but because these artworks help create friendlier spaces — making art accessible and adding colour to the urban landscape — they’ve captured the wider public imagination.
As it is, many of Joburg’s skyscrapers often assault they eye with mammoth booze advertisements. In this case, it’s a breath of fresh air to have an alcohol brand sponsor actual largescale artworks. And, critically, Hennessy hasn’t slapped its own brand on all of them either.
Where you can see the murals:
● Faith XLVII 2021 mural: Smit Service Road (corner De Beer
Street), Braamfontein;
● Vhils 2018 mural: Cosmopolitan Hotel, 24 Albrecht Street, Maboneng;
● Shepard Fairey 2014 mural: 70
Juta Street, Braamfontein.