Half-German, half-Cameroonian self-taught artist, actress and presenter Annabelle Mandeng has a mission. Her portraits are love letters to the friends she portrays, but they also contain socio-political messages. Mandeng focuses on the beauty of BIPOC people and uses black-and-white tape to represent the conservative structures of the German society in which she and they live. Mandeng describes her work as a reflection of her experiences as a Black woman in a predominantly white society, portraying friends with Black German roots surrounded by woven tape, with symbolic birds expressing freedom, survival, luck, and the strength of friendship.