H O P E
a body of work representing my journey in art, photography and film-making
Mapule Mokete
I like to scroll down my Instagram page a lot. Almost everyday. At least three times. I am obsessed with it. To be really honest, I put some effort into the pictures I take and the content I create. It is something that makes me very happy and keeps me on my toes.I have always wanted to put together the content I create onto a platform like this. A few months ago, I gave birth to Hope. I did not want to create something with my name on it so finding a name that's suitable for this project wasn't entirely easy.
This is how it happened,
I was scrolling down my Instagram feed, as usual. A comment from a friend of mine, Zai caught my eye. I couldn't help but to read it over and over. The comment read "your page gives me hope", I had responded to her but surprisingly, this time around something said to me "read that again and understand what she's saying. digest it.". I read it one more time and this time, I FELT IT. It ignited something strong inside of me and the word 'hope' has been stuck on my mind since.
Honestly, I am a very hopeful person. I have lived most of my life hoping for the best. Being hopeful helped with my tendency of overthinking. Instead of overthinking, I'd just hope everything turns out well. It takes a lot to be hopeful, you know, you can't just tell yourself that "you hope", it's a mental thing. To be hopeful takes a positive mind. When I searched for the definition of hope online, it read "Hope is an optimistic state of mind that is based on an expectation of positive outcomes with respect to events and circumstances in one's life or the world at large." so when Zai said that my feed gives her hope, I knew it was exactly what I needed to do; to create content that give people hope because hope motivates positive actions resulting in positive results. What brings me hope is experiencing the best the world has got to offer ; creativity, music, learning, traveling, art and innovation.
Let me introduce you to my first born child, Hope. A body of work representing my journey in art, photography and film-making. I have been accumulating some pieces and projects i have done in the past three years and from them, i created Hope. Please, do enjoy and share with those around you.
The Creator's Note:
My relationship with photography started off like any other beautiful love story that we have heard of. It was in my early high school days when I started flirting with my cellphone camera and taking photographs of everything and everyone. I enjoyed it so much. It was one of the few things in my life that fulfilled me. Whenever I felt a bit down, photography would always come sit next to me and somehow make the flowers in my heart bloom again. It really made everything else make sense. So when I received my DSLR camera from my mother in my first year at Rhodes University, I knew that it was the beginning of an incredible journey of shooting, creating and telling stories.
Vaalpark, 2020
photography reminds me all the time that the human eye is a powerful organ and therefore does wonders, especially with a good lighting and any photographic device. My passion as a Journalism TV student and a photographer is to tell stories. Photography allows me to do exactly that. I believe that being able to tell stories visually is a very strong skill to have as a journalist, a storyteller or a creative.
Ga-Masemola, 2019
this is, however not my first time blogging, I must say. I created my first blog at the end of my matric year. I had fun over there! I was still finding my feet (I still am), so young and really new into this. I had just discovered my passion for writing. That strong desire. That inner force, inner push. To write and to just write, so I did. I created a WordPress blog account, registered and slelected a bold, fierce theme. I was writing for all young women in the world. My aim was to empower young women, so they know that they can be whatever they want to be. It was a powerful blog, I loved it. It made me feel strong. It gave me so much hope. And then a few months down the line in my first year, I buckled. I slipped and my writing ran away from me as fast as it could. I was going through a rather unpleasant time, had zero motivation and eventually stopped blogging. I have been wanting to come back for the longest time since then.
long story short, I'm back and I am better. I've discovered my niche and I'm ready to explore it. So i am going back to writing and to being my full creative self. This journey is something i did not necessarily prepare myself for, it kind of just happened - organically, with time. I have grown so much since my first year and my first post. I am a woman who is on a conquest to becoming the best version of herself and I'd like to share that with you. I hope my journey inspires yours and gives you hope. May it help to revive that special something within you that might have died out along your way of growing.
long story short, I'm back and I am better. I've discovered my niche and I'm ready to explore it. So i am going back to writing and to being my full creative self. This journey is something i did not necessarily prepare myself for, it kind of just happened - organically, with time. I have grown so much since my first year and my first post. I am a woman who is on a conquest to becoming the best version of herself and I'd like to share that with you. I hope my journey inspires yours and gives you hope. May it help to revive that special something within you that might have died out along your way of growing.
Ga-Masemola, 2019