How Spike Lee and the New Yorker gave Nelson Mandela Bay artist Maneli wings

When Gqeberha artist Pola Maneli posted his work on Instagram he could not have imagined it would lead to a commission for an international magazine cover or be sold to an Oscar-winning movie director.

The New Yorker magazine commissioned the 33-year-old to illustrate its annual Martin Luther King edition cover on January 16 2023 — to mark the holiday in the US in honour of the life of the late civil rights activist.

The magazine approached the Nelson Mandela University MA Fine Art graduate to design its coveted cover slot after having previously used his illustration skills in the Manhattan publication.

Maneli said in his first encounter with the New Yorker he had received an email requesting an illustration for a piece in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in 2020 in the US.

“After I finished, I asked them, ‘how did you come across my work?’.

“It turned out that one of the pieces I had done as an editorial illustration exercise for my degree at Nelson Mandela University caught their eye on my Instagram feed,” Maneli said.

Overjoyed at the opportunity, he knew he had to bring his A-game.

“I just made sure that that entire process was professional, managing my time and my deadlines,” he said.

Then, after publication of the King cover — titled ‘Family Man’ and depicting King seated and surrounded by his four young children — the magazine informed him that Spike Lee, who directed films such as Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing and BlacKkKlansman, had asked for his contact details.

“Spike Lee was a close friend to the King family, and he has a direct line of communication to them.

“He called me, which was a wild, wild experience,” Maneli said.

“We had a chat about the work, and spoke a little bit about how I felt.

“I’ve always thought that his work has a similar kind of thinking or approach to it, he tries to make art about something he cares about.

“And then he told me that he’d like to purchase the original drawing of the cover.”

Lee then also put his illustration into an art exhibition about his creative influences at the Brooklyn Museum.

Though Maneli often delves into social issues in his art, he chose to portray King in a personal context, with his children Yolanda, Martin, Dexter and Bernice.

He said the illustration linked back to his NMU dissertation on the “Transgressive Performativities of Blackness with South African Visual Arts”.

“There are financial factors and incentives for black visual artists to make work in that way because the people with money to buy it predominantly have been white.

“My thesis posed the question of whether or not it was possible for black individual artists to somehow disentangle themselves from that.

“It’s a structural thing, so my answer is no: there is a limit to what an individual can do in their capacity against structural white supremacy and racism.

“However, the important thing is that the effort is there, that you’re mindful, trying to break a little bit away.

“With the Martin Luther King cover, that transgressive performativity of blackness literally informed my approach.

“The political side of his life was definitely part of him, but there’s a part that I had never seen.

“It is arguably the most important role, which is that of a father and a husband.”

After the New Yorker high, Maneli said he was trying to stay grounded as he continued his artistic career in 2024.

“I’m the only South African to have ever done a cover for the New Yorker.

“It’s very easy to have a distorted view of yourself, so I’m just trying to focus on the work.”

Maneli has also worked for The Atlantic, The New York Times, New Statesman and the New York Review of Books, among other prestigious titles.

Other high-profile clients include Brown University in the US, Germany’s Goethe-Institut and the Nelson Mandela Foundation and Constitution Hill in SA.

Maneli also created a Google doodle in 2022 to mark the 151st anniversary of the birth of Charlotte Maxeke, a trailblazer for black women’s rights.