Nala.

This print captures what you see: an aardwolf with tawny fur streaked in dark markings, wrapped in an ice-blue denim jacket covered in silver studs, with the only warm spot in the whole image being the pink hood peeking out at the collar. I created it facing forward, with a clean background: on a wall it needs nothing around it. The animal looks fearsome and isn't: the aardwolf is the smallest and most harmless of its family, and its whole defense is looking bigger than it really is.

Nala learned it from her grandmother Koko, the village seamstress, one night with a torch at the edge of a field in Limpopo: two eyes under a bush, a crest that flashed up for a second and vanished into a burrow. "Looks big. But it's small, and it doesn't bite. It only eats ants." "Termites, Koko." "Ants with helmets." That's what Animal Kinhood is about, my series of animals with clothes and a trade: here, a tattoo artist from the Highveld. This print lifts her out of her story and puts her on your wall, where the matte finish gives off no glare. There's more of her in her biography.