00:00You might know this trend alert.
00:02African heritage design is blowing up worldwide.
00:05But Oahing Manana, he's not following the trend.
00:08He's rewriting it.
00:10I'm trying to tell the stories of belonging.
00:12Trying to find a space in the design world
00:16where African design also has an ethos
00:19and also kind of like equals our values,
00:22where we come from and how our ancestors used to live
00:25and now trying to take all of that information
00:28and try to modernize it.
00:30To understand the stories behind his designs,
00:32you need to see where they came from.
00:34I grew up having some sort of an identity crisis,
00:40you would call it.
00:41I grew up in a township.
00:42There's a lot of different cultures.
00:45And so in me trying to find myself,
00:48I had to sort of figure out where do I belong
00:51because as a Swati boy growing up in the Northwest
00:54where it's a Tawana-speaking province,
00:58I had to figure out how to navigate both worlds
01:01and I basically make them to identify with me.
01:04That sort of made me know how to approach my first beginning of design.
01:10Why do we need new ways like design to reconnect with South African identity today?
01:16As a young designer, as a person that exists right now in the modern society of South Africa,
01:21is that every time when I design something, I always refer back.
01:25I have books that were written by people that lived back in the past.
01:30I have books that are written by culture.
01:32And I always read back.
01:34And I always take that information and interpret it to the now living.
01:38I have a responsibility to sort of explore all these heritages and all these tribes
01:43to sort of tell a story because this is the space that I'm in.
01:46And everything else is just a medium.
01:48Then I have to express myself through that.
01:50Every curve, every texture, nothing here is accidental.
01:54But for Oa Heng, design isn't just design.
01:57It's a way to save the stories he grew up with.
02:00So the chair I'm sitting on came from the highest form of femininity,
02:04but in a more royal approach.
02:07The side that is more warm, it's more of the feminine side.
02:11So this chair was sort of trying to encapsulate the idea of how a queen,
02:16for example, feels around their way of leading,
02:20around their people, around their husbands, around their kids.
02:24So this chair was sort of like trying to invigorate
02:27what that message of being a queen would mean.
02:32And it feels like a hug when you sit on it,
02:34which is why we ended up naming the chair Siddilo Sabukhosi,
02:39meaning that it's basically a chair of royalty.
02:42From queens to something drawn straight from the earth,
02:45Oa Heng is paying for a big moment in his career,
02:48showcasing at a large platform for African designers.
02:51What does that moment mean for shining a light on South African culture?
02:55It's very vital that when we tell these stories,
02:58that these stories are sort of symbolizing who we are as Africans.
03:03Any piece that is made, it's sort of like a book that is written.
03:10So in order for that to live,
03:13in order for that to still be a thing that the future generation speaks about,
03:19it has to honestly come from the originality of your heritage.
03:22Right now we're at the workshop.
03:24This is a collaboration between a mixed media artist called Sirete.
03:28And this is actual cow dung and soil.
03:32So we're sort of trying to mimic an idea of how hearts were built back in the day.
03:38So we're going to incorporate the technique and the process into our stand.
03:45Oa Heng used to work in physics.
03:47And today he uses that same brain to build furniture
03:50that keeps Tuana and Suthu stories alive.
03:52Because for him, every piece has a memory.
03:55I wanted to understand for myself,
03:58what does it mean to be young and to be African?
04:02And how do I sort of leave a legacy with all that I've learned?
04:06So in the journey that I am in right now,
04:09it sort of is something that is informed also by what I studied.
04:14I studied a lot of science.
04:15And I felt that I'm existing in a world
04:18that is already has its own fabric and its own DNA.
04:21So anything that has to do with production,
04:24picking of materials, picking of directions
04:27as to where the piece is going to go and how durable it is,
04:31it really comes from the science background.
04:32And I'd say that it really came as a natural transition.
04:36Where I am in space is like I'm guided by spirituality.
04:39And you can never have a medium of communication
04:44or link to the ancestors without having a very spiritual being in yourself.
04:49So for me, when I create these pieces,
04:52I sort of think of what would our ancestors
04:56would have liked for us to become
04:58in the current times and in the future.
05:02Oaheng Manana is choosing a different path.
05:05His furniture carries the stories and traditions that shaped him,
05:09becoming a quiet but powerful way of keeping culture alive.
05:13I also feel open to the environment
05:13in some early levee place.
05:13.
05:13On 5th .
05:14rule book
05:14Asabi
05:15schedule
05:17the time
