20.
I style them then I shoot them.
still experiencing what you have failed to inform me on about life.
+ hopefully inspiring ouens along the way.
Tony Gum is an “artist in learning”, who has been dubbed by Vogue.com as possibly the “Coolest Girl in Cape Town”. She is the co-founder of The Local Collective
Vlog on YouTube, which is affiliated to the Icon Endemol global network of multimedia content
producers.
Gum is a second-year film student at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and is
producing a new prism through which to view African contemporary art, fashion and culture. Gum
is represented by the Christopher Moller Art Gallery and her latest projects include “uTwiggy”,
“iSnap” and the famous “Black Coca” series, launched at the Johannesburg Art Fair 2015. This
launch saw Gum collaborating with FNB as the official poster artist for the fair.
The Cola series featured an array of projected identities that she beautifully spliced together with
the global iconic Coke brand. Through the power of her visuals, Gum aims to show a pathway to
embracing the West while remaining true and proud of one’s heritage. Her inspiration and
message behind the Coca-Cola series, in creating an African representative for the popular
beverage as Coke, is making the Coke brand uniquely African and creating an intimate link
between the brand and the “people”. Gum is proud of her African heritage but she is equally happy
to fuse with Western brands: she has the best of both worlds.
In February 2016, Gum delivered captivating keynote in front of 2 500 delegates at this year’s
Design Indaba Conference and launched her new body of work at the Cape Town Art Fair and the Pulse NewYork Contemporary Art Fair at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York; where she was nominated
for the Prize Award – a jury-awarded cash grant for an artist at the fair.