HAVING BAGGED THE HYPE AWARD FOR GRAFFITI ARTIST OF THE YEAR AND BEING HAILED AS GRAFFITI’S TOP LADY BY THE SAME MAGAZINE, FAITH: 47 HAS BECOME UNSTOPPABLE, SHE’S PAINTED IN PLACES SOME PAINTERS STILL DREAM TO.

When news made rounds that she and her crew will come all the way from Cape Town to paint at a library in Duncan Village(a township just outside East London), local cats B1, J.O, Cosmic Pulse and Noble 17 took it upon themselves to welcome Faith:47 and her crew, with Khayelitsha’s most respected graffiti artist Beif 35 on tow.

The crowd who had come to watch this award winning graffiti artist work her magic was not about to be fazed out by her late arrival; and quite clearly they were not going to let the scorching sun spoil the whole affair. They gathered under a shade, and started a mini cipher while B1 played on the decks ‘till she arrived.

FreeRiddim's Nwabisa Ngumbela managed to steal some of her time…

Q: You won a Hype award how did this make you feel and has it challenged you to up your game?

Winning the award was sweet, but I’m conscious of the fact that criticism and praise can be both bad for you. You can pay attention to a certain degree but you should also not be affected by either, you should be stable enough not to get a big head or get depressed if someone is criticizing your work. You need to maintain a middle road.

Q: What message are you portraying with your work?

It’s more of a personal journey for me, its self expression. It’s a way of dealing with life at the same time a way of being alive. It’s like music. After all we as people are similar one way or the other.

Q: Graffiti is not exactly a legit form of art; one wonders how you make a living out of it?

I do illustrations and a lot of canvas work. I try not to do many graffiti jobs as it takes away the excitement, it’s actually boring when people tell you what to do and what colors to use.

Q: Are you still in touch in with the people that got you into graffiti?

Yeah. I was introduced into graffiti through Wealz 130 and YMB crew.
They are very, very close friends of mine. Wealz was one of the first writers, he use to do trains 
and was one of the first bombers in Cape town. From there I met up with the PBA crew from Mitchell’s Plain. That was back in ’97 and I’m still hanging out with all of them.

Q: Many people still see graffiti as vandalism and a sign of rebel what’s your take on that?

Q: Why are you taking videos of your work?

The project we working on right now is Epitaph. It’s a series of words that will form a music video we will be doing for a band called the Larks. Each word will form a scene in the music video.

check out her work on:
www.faith47.com