Writer, Musician, Performance Artist.
Picture this. It’s been raining for days. Then, a sudden break in the cloud. Light pours into a crack in the road — the water, there, now a mirror to the sky. Then sound. A guitar strums up and down to the beat of threes and fours. A foot taps. A mouth opens and sings. Story interweaves melody, threaded together by ideas, love affairs, and questions about life, death and everything in between.
You leave this experience changed — more human by now somehow having understood something deeper about what it means to be human. You can’t explain it. Can’t put your finger on it precisely. Yet you know, unmistakably, that you are now better for having been there - here - present. Feeling fully. Breathing deeply. Not alone. Not separate. For the first time. Part of something. Belonging. Yet still completely yourself.
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The daughter of a sex worker and pentecostal evangelist. Their love - wrought in the entangled pursuit of stardom, stability and self-acceptance. Tanika grew in a world shaped by contrasting belief systems, lived realities and paradox.
Her work inhabits the threshold between the sacred and the profane, the everyday and the obscene, the reliable and the chaotic — traipsing the edges of socially constructed boundaries — and returning again and again to the question:
“What does it mean to be free?”
The Butterfly Effect [EP]
The Butterfly Effect is a principle derived from Chaos Theory: the idea that a small shift in the initial conditions of a complex system can lead to vast, unpredictable outcomes. A butterfly flaps its wings, and somewhere else — impossibly far away — a storm gathers.
This project is a celebration of everything soft, gentle, vulnerable, and fragile — and yet quietly powerful. Like water triumphing over rock, its energy is subtle but enduring. The sound moves like cool mountain stream water on a scorching summer’s day.
The music interlaces delicate ambient textures with moments of transcendent orchestration and anthemic voice. Simple chords and melodies cradle complex ideas and emotional depth. Cinematic in nature, the project unfolds with a storytelling flow — as though you are reading a book that gradually resolves into a choir of voices: clapping, moving, dancing out of cleanly organised lines and into a distilled silence. A singular beat remains. It stops, then begins again — in utero. The womb. The sound of our mother’s heartbeat. The first place any of us ever hear music.
Sound as Sketch Demo Recordings for EP production:
The songs progress as a metamorphosis: egg → caterpillar → chrysalis → emergence → butterfly. Grief and loss give way to transformation, then transcendence. In this sense, change becomes the gateway to heightened awareness — a deeper consciousness and a fuller connection to self and other.
As we heal ourselves, those around us begin to heal too. As we heal together, our environments heal. As our environments heal, we return to ourselves more deeply. An upward spiral. Harmony.
Sound as sketch. Early demo recordings from an EP in progress. The final release is currently unfolding in arrangement, texture, and mix. Expected release: April 2026.
Storytelling
This portfolio documents a series of live storytelling projects developed from journalistic research and realised through artistic practice. Presented across multiple mediums, each project reflects an end-to-end creative process, including conceptual development, production, marketing, sales, writing, and performance. All works were produced between 2024-2025.
with Takura Terry, Hayley Jade and CandyFlip
Migration
Women in Africa
with Cally Silberhauer & Patagonia
Jazz and Geopolitics
with Bheki Khoza - a mentorship
My Mother was a Musician
a Spoken Word Series
Everything I’ve Learned about Love
with Bheki Khoza and The Rocc Lobsters
an Exhibition with Oscar Guitterez
The Unlived Life
Processing Change
with Magé Troskie
Letters to a Young Artist
with Angelah Stuurman
To Love the Wind
with Umuthiomkhulu Ensemble at The Bijou Open Studios
"We Must Teach Each Other How we want to be Loved.”
An Annual Multi-Media Storytelling Project & Press Campaign
“We Must Teach Each Other…” is an annual multi-media storytelling project and press campaign that takes place each July at The Bijou in Observatory, Cape Town. Working in collaboration with a photographer, I co-create a living story on the gallery walls — a body of text that evolves in direct response to questions, reflections, and provocations left behind by the public as they engage with the photographic exhibition.
Each iteration is curated around a pertinent social theme. Dialogue is extended beyond the gallery through a series of intimate public gatherings hosted throughout the month, creating space for reflection, exchange, and collective meaning-making. The project culminates in a closing performance that introduces sound, colour, and movement to the written work — transforming the exhibition into a fully immersive, multi-modal communication experience.
The entire month-long process is documented and edited into a short film, which is shared with community leaders, governance structures, and media platforms. These films function as a feedback loop — ensuring that community dialogue remains visible, accessible, and capable of informing broader public participation and decision-making processes in service of social cohesion.
2025 Edition — The Unlived Life
The 2025 project was developed in collaboration with photojournalist Oscar Gutiérrez, whose work documented South Africa’s 1994 transition of power. The exhibition explored the theme The Unlived Life, asking: What lives and careers might activists have lived had there been no Apartheid?
This film documents the public’s encounter with that question — their reflections, responses, and reckonings — offering a collective meditation on memory, possibility, and the futures shaped by history.