Reimagining Tragedy from Africa and the Global South

Linda Mandela

Linda

Mandela

Creative

Stage Designer

Costume Designer

Linda Mandela is a freelancer costume/set/makeup/body painting/ex dancer artist based in Cape Town. She has been working professionally on costumes and set since 2011 when she started as a wardrobe coordinator for Jazzart Dance theatre at the Artscape theatre centre in Cape Town. She studied fine arts at the Durban Institute of Technology in KwaZulu Natal. She moved to Cape Town and joined a training program for dance with Jazzart Art theatre. She was in training under Alfred Hinkel as an artistic director and graduated after 3years. She was also involved with the University of South Africa on a course for adult basic training and acquired a senior certificate for ABET. After she finished her training programs with Jazzart she did an internship programs with the wardrobe department of Artscape under the mentor ship of Penny Simpson and Craig Leo.
After a year of internship she was employed by Jazzart as a wardrobe coordinator and started growing from there. After working with Jazzart for a couple of years she went to work at a youth centre in Paarl- Mbekweni Youth Centre; where she was coordinating health and wellness programs for the centre in dance and visual arts. She later started freelancing and opened a shoe ramping brand called BrandOld. She got a lot of recognition in the media to mention a few, Drum magazine, Cape Ads news paper, and an interview about the brand by Mnet supper sport and Bush Radio.

Linda has worked with various well known artists like Alfred Hinkel, Mandla Mbothwe, Mamela Nyamza, Faniswa Yisa, Mike Van Graan, Craig Leo, Magnet Theatre, Jazzart Dance Theatre, Pamela Nomvete, Jay Pather, Sbonakaliso Ndaba, Lara Foot and a few others not mentioned.

Linda is currently based in Cape Town pursuing her shoe revamping & freelancing productions locally and has started going international. She was involved in the Pact Zollverein Festival in Essen- Germany, with the work of Mamela Nyamza. You will see some of her work with Magnet theatre, UCT school of Opera, Cape Town Opera House, Western Cape Provincial Sports Confederation.

Professional