We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Boitumelo Diseko-Ngubeni a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Boitumelo , appreciate you joining us today. One of the toughest things about entrepreneurship is that there is almost always unexpected problems that come up – problems that you often can’t read about in advance, can’t prepare for, etc. Have you had such and experience and if so, can you tell us the story of one of those unexpected problems you’ve encountered?

I’ve faced some resistance, namely for being young or a female or black and also starting a business without external funding or any assistance. How I navigated from that is by always reminding myself of what’s my WHY. A lot of businesses know their WHAT(being their product) and know their HOW but most don’t know why they do what they do. Money is the by-product and it shouldn’t be the WHY. The WHY will get you through the tough times of business, when the aren’t any sales, when you get so much resistance in the industry etc. As a leader you need to always inspire your team of the mission of the Art Gallery or any business.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Boitumelo Diseko-Ngubeni, I’m a young female black Art Gallery Owner and an Artist, I’ve got close to a decade of experience in visual arts, customer relationship, sales administration and management. I’d like to view myself as a canvas and my Maker(God) is the Artist and I’m His artwork, my creativity is an outflow of His. Born 1996 in Rustenburg, South Africa, I received my Honors in Fine Arts from the University of Pretoria.

As the Owner of B Artworks Gallery, I want to make sure that creatives own their own narratives which also allows them to own the economic processes that creates those narratives and that’s how we benefit.
I want to reshape the ‘starving artist narrative’ because the is a lot of money in the creative economy but not so much when it comes to the homes and hands of the creatives. That’s one of the issues I aim to tackle with owning B Artworks Gallery.

B Artworks Gallery was nominated at Forty Under 40 South Africa Awards 2023, which is curated to identify, honour and celebrate a cross-section of the nation’s most influential and accomplished young business leaders under the age of 40 from a wide range of industries, who are committed to business growth, professional excellence, community service and have risen up the ranks of their companies or industries.

The motto of B Artworks Gallery is “Be Artworks and aspire to inspire.” We don’t aspire to make a living but aspire to make a difference.
Our Task Regarding Creativity, Is To Help And Inspire The Youth To Climb Their Own Mountains As High As Possible.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I worked in retail for a couple of years until I was in Management, while selling my artworks on the side. The experience I got from being in retail helped me a lot when it came to customer service and management when it came to B Artworks Gallery.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The challenges one would face are the constant questions of “is this the right path I’m on?” And “how are you going to make enough money?” Though I believe this is the path that God has called me on. Challenges arise but with every highs and lows, I’m constantly learning and growing.

As a creative I got trapped in ‘chasing money’, and creating Artworks that thought buyers would want and in that process I lost myself and why I started the business. I had to unlearn the mentality of chasing money.

Some days the are sales and some days the aren’t but you need to be resilient in both the highs and lows. A breakthrough will come sooner or later, it’s your character that is being strengthened in the process and the will be some lessons you receive that you’d be glad your learned earlier on.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/b_artworksgallery/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boitumelo-diseko888/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/B_ArtworksGall
• Email: [email protected]