22-year-old SA Security Guard, Astral Msekeli, Becomes Africa’s Art Master
In a country like South Africa, where the unemployment rate for 15-24-year-olds is currently 63%, young people can feel easily compelled to give up on their dreams and talents. For Astral Msekeli, a 22-year-old security guard and artist, it was at this very moment of deep insecurity that he made the life decision to follow his dreams.
Astral, who currently lives in Umlazi, KwaZulu Natal, came upon a Facebook post one day that read “Are you a ball pen artist? You can win prizes of 6,000 USD”. BIC Stationery had just launched their annual continent-wide competition that required entrants to create an art piece using the BIC Ball Pen.
Since its inception in 2019, BIC Art Master of Africa has showcased the incredible talent that exists within the African continent, including Fatiou Aboudou, whose BIC Pen drawing of Black Lion was awarded first place in 2019. Ennock Mlangeni, who drew the now popular portrait of mama Winnie Mandela with his BIC Pen, was not only the winner of the 2018 BIC competition but continued to be selected as the judge for BIC Art Master 2021, where Astral was a contestant.
“When I saw the competition on Facebook I just told myself that I had to enter and take a chance,” says Astral. “I started off by taking a lot of pictures so that I could gain some inspiration and I eventually managed to pick one that I could draw… I had some doubts during this process. First of all, I’ve never really entered a competition in my life, and I’ve never really drawn something like this using a ball pen. I thought a lot about so many other people probably being better at this than me. I thought about all the professional artists all over Africa who were going to enter and felt like I couldn’t possibly win.”
Astral had been gifted from a very young age. As a kid, he’d draw at any opportunity and in high school, he was his school’s designated artist. According to Astral, teachers often made requests for his drawings to hang over the wall and at other times he was asked to draw any posters that were needed at school. Sometime after high school, he found a job working as a security guard and had less time to fit his art into his life. Although these are the very reasons he might’ve doubted himself he knew that only two things were true:
“I knew I had been born with this gift so I had to use it and also, there’s nothing I could lose from trying. The least I could do was try.”
Indeed, Astral emerged as one of the competitions biggest winners, coming in at number six out of the top ten finalists. His artwork was chosen from 6,350 entries submitted by more than 3,700 artists from 52 countries across the Middle East and Africa. The work was shortlisted by a panel of judges including experts from BIC, artists from the mentioned region, winners from previous Art Master Africa competitions, and art experts from Europe.
From the photos that he took to draw inspiration from, Astral selected a picture of his grandmother in a moment of happiness and transformed it into a whimsical depiction of his grandmother balancing a bright red butterfly on her index finger. She wears an isicholo, a traditional Zulu headdress often worn by women during cultural or religious ceremonies.
In a statement to the press, Astral states: “Ubuntu” was inspired by my 91-year-old grandmother who told me to value every aspect of life and to have compassion for every living being as well as nature.
In our interview, he uses the Zulu word “qhakaza” to describe the way in which he wanted to portray his grandmother.
“She raised me alongside my mother and because she’s getting older I wanted to shine a light on her life. She can’t see due to her age, but when I explain everything to her, about me winning, about what the drawing looks like, she understands and she’s overjoyed.”