Lady Skollie – aka Laura Windvogel – lives, works, performs, and hustles for centre stage in Johannesburg, South Africa, using storytelling, ink, watercolour, crayon, and woodcut printing as her weapons of choice. She describes her work as “fire, ritual, Khoisan,” referencing the Khoisan indigenous people of southern Africa, who have lived in the region for thousands of years and to whom South Africa’s self-identifying “coloured” community traces cultural connections. Her work is alive with emotional, political, and sexual turmoil, depicting relationships between godlike figures and flawed mortals who sing, grunt, reflect, and gush. Her characters writhe, twist, dance, queue, and support one another across paper, architecture, and even the commemorative coin she designed to mark 25 years of constitutional democracy in South Africa. The name “Skollie,” historically used as a derogatory term in South Africa for a shady character, especially when people of colour occupied spaces deemed unsuitable by the white populace, is embraced by the artist as part of her identity. By combining this “shadiness” with masculine and feminine energies, she creates a space where different aspects of her personality can coexist. As she explains, “I just like having an alias. You feel like you can take more risks under a pseudonym… there is a psychology behind aliases, a kind of strength that they give you.” Lady Skollie’s work has been exhibited widely in galleries, community spaces, and art fairs across South Africa, Europe, and the USA. Beyond the art world, her persona extends into lifestyle and fashion culture through magazine covers, Instagram influence, and brand collaborations. She has appeared on BBC Africa, CNN International’s African Voices, and the BBC World Service series In the Studio. In 2018, she was included in OkayAfrica’s 100 Women list, which celebrates influential women across different fields. In 2022, Lady Skollie won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts, one of South Africa’s most prestigious honours for artists under 35, joining previous recipients such as William Kentridge, Brett Murray, Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, and Blessing Ngobeni.