Ayandiswa Bekanjani is a painter, ceramist, photographer who has shown interest of becoming an artist at her teenage years while still in High School. She completed her Fine Arts Diploma in 2021 and Advanced diploma in Fine Arts in 2022 at Walter Sisulu University in the Eastern Cape. She sold her first art piece in 2019, a sculpture at the National Art Festival called Isikhalo. She was introduced to photography by her former classmate in 2021. She has been taking pictures, learning about photography, and attending exhibitions. Her interest is seeing how photography wis being displayed, Bekanjani gained more experience in the Women Empowerment Photography in Tsitsikama.
The primary focus of this project is on the social and environmental problems facing residents of Butterworth, Eastern Cape. Since 2019, the people have been dealing with a continuing problem of water scarcity. People turn to methods like drilling boreholes to find water and end up consuming unpurified water. The Local Municipality has been notified of the complaints for a long time, but nothing has changed. The problem of the drought and the drying up of the Gcuwa dam has made things even worse. Communities increasingly rely on water trucks or purchase their water. My photography projects are mostly concerned with societal concerns that people in their communities are facing and that I have always felt the need to address.
