Some of the memories that shape us most are the ones we barely noticed while they were happening.

Getting ready for school. Doing chores on a Saturday. Sitting with family. Watching a grandmother go about the everyday business of raising a child. For South African visual artist DBongz, those ordinary moments have now been transformed into something impossible to miss.

Standing at the entrance to Soweto’s iconic Vilakazi Street is a new mural created for Sunlight Green Bar’s Raised by the Bar campaign, marking the brand’s 135-year presence in South Africa.

At its centre is a young DBongz alongside his grandmother — but the story extends far beyond one family.

From Childhood Ritual to Public Art

DBongz’s mural takes the familiar rituals of home and places them against one of South Africa’s most recognisable cultural backdrops.

The artist recalls Sunlight Green Bar being part of his childhood routine, from getting ready for school and weekend chores to a particularly personal memory of his cousin using the bar to twist their hair.

Those details might sound insignificant. That is precisely the point.

We rarely recognise a moment as heritage while we are living it. It is only years later that certain smells, objects, places and routines suddenly become portals back to where we came from.

For DBongz, his grandmother sits at the centre of that memory — representing the people who quietly pour pieces of themselves into the next generation.

Why Vilakazi Street Makes the Story Bigger

Location is everything.

Vilakazi Street is already deeply embedded in South Africa’s cultural memory. The street was once home to both Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu and has evolved into a living destination where history meets food, tourism, art, business and everyday township culture.

Positioning the mural at the street’s main entrance, opposite Tutu’s former home, gives the artwork another layer of meaning.

A private childhood memory becomes part of a public conversation.

And that is where muralism can be particularly powerful. Instead of keeping stories inside galleries, public art puts them directly into the spaces where people live, work, visit and gather.

Who Raised You?

The Raised by the Bar campaign uses Sunlight’s 135th anniversary to explore a question that is bigger than a household cleaning product: who and what shaped the person you became?

DBongz’s answer begins with his grandmother, but the mural deliberately expands that answer to include families, communities and everyday figures.

It becomes a visual reminder that our identities are rarely built alone.

The people who raised us may not always appear in history books, but their influence can live on through us — in our values, creativity, habits, resilience and the stories we tell.

Turning Heritage Into Something We Can See

For young South Africans navigating rapidly changing cities and cultures, heritage is not only about looking backwards.

It is also about deciding which memories deserve to be carried forward.

DBongz’s mural does exactly that. It takes something deeply personal and gives it a place within the visual landscape of Soweto.

After 135 years, Sunlight’s anniversary is being marked not simply through a number, but through a memory — painted onto a wall where thousands of people can encounter it.

Because sometimes the everyday things that raised us become the stories worth putting on the biggest walls.