Adia Mahlalela

Adia Mahlalela is a South African art photographer who was born in Gauteng and reared in Emangweni, a tiny community in the beautiful province of Mpumalanga. Growing up in a natural setting like Mpumalanga drew her closer to nature and instilled in her a love for African environment and culture, teaching her to appreciate and cherish everything for what it is.

This is what her art photography is all about: embracing African beauty in all of its raw and unadulterated glory. Breaking all of the world's beauty standards that label people as ugly or insufficient simply because they don't meet the world's concept of beauty, and giving beauty a whole new meaning.

Adia is a firm believer in beauty as the single thing we all have in common in this different world, and she wants to illustrate that Africans are great works of art with a rich cultural background. Using people of different shapes and sizes, she demonstrates that accepting ourselves for who we are, rather than the opinions of others, is what makes us perfect.

Photography was important to her because it gave her a platform to be a voice for the voiceless, allowing others to see Africans and their beauty through a different lens. She embraces Africanism, African culture, and history in her work, empowering African women to love and accept themselves as true works of art.