Lady Skollie

Lady Skollie (b. 1987) – aka Laura Windvogel – is a South African feminist artist and activist. She employs ink, watercolour, and crayon to address topics such as sex, pleasure, consent, human connection, violence, and abuse. Her work explores themes related to the erotic and the complexities of human experience. Alive with emotional, political, sexual turmoil and loud questioning voices, Lady Skollie’s works depict relationships between godlike figures and flawed mortals singing, grunting, reflecting, gushing. Her characters writhe, twist and dance, queue and hold each other up. The moniker ‘Skollie’ is a widely used derogatory term to describe a shady character, historically used in South Africa when a person of colour was in a place deemed unsuitable by the white populace. Lady Skollie embraces this shadiness, combining it with an interplay of masculine and feminine energies, creating a space where the disparate parts of her personality are reconciled. The artist 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 – aka Laura Windvogel – is a South African feminist artist and activist. She employs ink, watercolor, and crayon to address topics such as sex, pleasure, consent, human connection, violence, and abuse. Her work is simultaneously bold and vulnerable, expressing the joy and darkness of the erotic and the duality and complexity of human experience. Alive with emotional, political, sexual turmoil and loud questioning voices, Lady Skollie’s works depict relationships between godlike figures and flawed mortals, often in frenzied action. She pays homage to the indigenous Khoisan people of southern Africa, using her work to imagine spiritual genealogies of South African black communities.
The term "Skollie" is a historical term that originates in the Dutch-colonized South Africa, historically used by white people to identify a black person whom they considered untrustworthy or having come from an undesirable community. By embracing this term to refer to herself, Lady Skollie creates an ironically fearsome and gender-nonspecific persona, allowing her a space where disparate parts of her personality are reconciled and providing an agency with which she can express opinions on sensitive subjects. According to the artist, the alias helps her find the strength to take risks and push boundaries with her work.
Lady Skollie (b. Cape Town, 1987) graduated from the University of Cape Town and has exhibited all over her native country of South Africa, as well as Europe and North America. In 2019 she was commissioned to design a new five Rand coin commemorating the 25th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy. In 2017, along with Tschabalala Self and Abe Odedina, the artist contributed artwork for the stage design of a gala performance of The Children’s Monologues, a charitable event directed by Danny Boyle and held at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Lady Skollie first collaborated with David Krut Workshop in 2023, where she worked with DKW Printers Roxy Kaczmarek and Sarah Judge on a series of unique monoprint variations. She returned to the workshop in 2025 to continue the collaboration.
Her solo exhibitions include Groot Gat at Everard Read Gallery (Johannesburg, 2023), A PREDICTION at Everard Read Gallery (2021), Bound at Everard Read Gallery (2020), Good & Evil at Circa (Johannesburg, 2019), Lust Politics at Tyburn Gallery (London, 2017), Sex at Stevenson Gallery (Johannesburg, 2016), Hottentot $kollie, part of Tomorrows/Today at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair (2016), Ask for what you want at WorldArt Gallery (Cape Town, 2015), Vroeg Ryp, Vroeg Vrot at Stevenson Gallery (2015), and The only reason at Stevenson Gallery (2014).

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