“The community is just hugely, hugely important to me,” Jo explains, when I ask how she knows just about everyone in downtown Johannesburg. “I’ve always felt very strongly that I would like as much as possible to assimilate into a place, and not make the community feel like they’re on display.”
She’s certainly doing a great job of educating us – and correcting our misconceptions. We pass some men pulling large, heavy bags on carts, their clothes threadbare, their bags full of bottles, cans and scraps of plastic.
Perhaps seeing my pitying glance, Jo tells us that these guys are the local scrap collectors, a self-organized group who collect recyclable waste in various districts, and are something of a Joburg icon. “I’m not sure how long they’ve been doing this, but it feels like a long time. Many people admire them, and realize the important job they do – and it’s a small business, which is great. But I think it’s an incredibly tough life.”
Johannesburg’s street art is most meaningful as an ever-changing public gallery, capturing the present moment.
Jo moves us on to Market on Main, a warehouse full of creative, hipster-friendly stalls, where I spot t-shirts printed with images of the Johannesburg scrap collectors – as iconic as Jo said. "There's so much good stuff inside the market,” she tells us, “but don't forget to look out on the streets as well. The stalls out here are full of creativity and local crafts." And the walls, too, peppered with tags and small murals I may have walked right past before this tour.
Before coming here, I had expected the street art in Johannesburg to be unrelentingly political, confronting the city’s fraught history in ten-storey-tall murals. But while there’s plenty of politicism there, the artists are also looking forward to the city’s bright future, and creating some truly beautiful work along the way.
I think back to two imaginative pieces we saw earlier, encapsulating this mix: on one wall of a courtyard was a looming portrait of Dutch colonialist Jan van Riebeeck swathed in modern African wax-print fabric (“Africa’s colonising him right back,” Jo said with a wry smile) by Gaia and Freddy Sam; and on the other was a triptych by Afrika47, who explores gun violence by decorating weapons with traditional Zulu beadwork, photographing and painting the results.
Standing there, craning my neck to gawp at first one stunning piece then the next, I felt that, more than exploring the past or looking to the future, Johannesburg’s street art is most meaningful as an ever-changing public gallery, capturing the present moment. And in a way that’s what Jo’s tours are doing, too. At their heart is her passion and drive to share with us the beautiful pieces which are there now – and which, by the very nature of the art form, could be gone tomorrow.