Samantha Maseko is a South African artist who has completed her third year in printmaking at the Artist Proof Studio.

Samantha’s body of work revolves around the themes of feminism and identity. It looks at the misconceptions of beauty about black women and how that puts them/has put them in a predicament. In her work she shows how black women have evolved throughout the years by raising 21st-century controversies around black women bleaching their skin, replacing their natural hair with synthetic hair, and modifying their bodies to fit certain beauty standards laid out by society.

The work is inspired by her career journey in modeling and a song by  Nina Simone called “Four Women”, which speaks about black women who had issues with the way their hair, body, and complexion were… This made Samantha realize that we have been brainwashed for so many years by social media, modeling agencies, western cultures, and men into feeling this way about themselves, so with this body of work she seeks to empower women from all walks of life who have felt degraded or dismissed by social media.