By Iminza Keboge
Published September 2, 2020
Some 34 African artists and scholars have been awarded a new online fellowship programme to help them ‘develop and realise their interdisciplinary artistic work’.
The Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) of South Africa’s University of Cape Town that has just announced the awardees of its 2020/21 ICA Online Fellowship, says the programme ‘was launched in response to the devastation wrought on our health and economies, and especially on artists, by COVID-19 as well as to the possibilities that crisis might offer for the development of new forms and new ways of seeing and experiencing art’.
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Out of 218 applications, ICA says it selected 34–instead of 20–fellows ‘based on the high calibre of submissions’.
“The The 34 selected fellows will now collaborate with the curatorial and project team at the ICA, and other members of staff across Faculties at the University of Cape Town, as well as digital interaction designers to develop a plan and a rendering for the online showing of their work. This will finally take the form of a live art or interdisciplinary work using music, theatre, dance or fine art as a base, and collaborating across disciplines,” ICA says. “A staggered showcase of the 34 Fellows’ works, as well as public discussions, are scheduled to begin from November 2020 and to run until 2021.”
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The selected fellows are:
- Jared Onyango is a performer and choreographer based in Nairobi, Kenya. Jared conceives and presents his work as contemporary dance and in writing
- Opiyo Okach is a catalyst for a new depth of intellectual reflection and new perspectives and vocabularies in dance from East Africa. Awarded the prix du Nouveau Talent Chorégraphiques SACD – a Prince Claus Award for Culture and Development and the main prize at the second Rencontres Chorégraphiques Africaines. These accolades place this director of the first contemporary dance company in Kenya amongst the pioneers of a new generation of choreographers from Africa
- King Debs is an artist who focuses on multimedia art and design. He draws his influences from his MoTswana heritage and lived experiences as a child being born in Mafikeng and growing up in Tshwane
- Kyle malanda is a visual artist whose work, primarily through photography and fashion design, explores the intersections of sexual identity, mental health, tribalism, and generational trauma in an increasingly globalised digital world
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- mlondi. is a researcher, director, aspiring writer, performer and co-founder of noise inside. mlondi’s. practice engages with the simultaneously private and public performance of black maleness and cultural belonging, and the slippages between intimacy, desire, playfulness and violence that bedevil the navigation of (heteronormative) relationships among black men
- Mthuthuzeli Zimba is an interdisciplinary artist, passionate about storytelling and believes in performances of transgression and disruption as a way of creating dialogue to confront and address unresolved socio-political issues that plague contemporary South Africa
- Oupa Sibeko is an interdisciplinary performance artist, scholar and educator whose work deals with matters and politics of the body as a site of contested knowledge
- Scott Eric Williams is a self-taught artist from Cape Town and 2019 Andrew Mellon Award winner. He uses diverse media, which includes sculpture, weaving zines and Wheatpaste street art. As a founding member of the collective Burning Museum (2012-2015) Williams’ work is strongly characterized by themes of archive, remembrance and marginalized histories
- Themba Mbuli is an independent choreographer, performer and dramaturge for collaborative creations who was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Dance in 2016
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- Wezile Mgibe is an award-winning art practitioner using interdisciplinary practice encompassing performance, visuals, film and installation as a tool for social change
- Malebona Maphutse is an artist who completed her BA (Fine Art) Degree at the University of Witwatersrand in 2017. She works in and outside of the academic institution. She has recently exhibited at the Stellenbosch Triennale 2020 (Tomorrow There Will Be More of Us) and Bergen Triennial 2019 (The Dead Are Not Dead)
- uLuvuyo Equiano Nyawose ingane kaCindy noKwazi, baKwa-Mashu H section, nga Kwesethu High School. uGogo wakhe, uMaSibisi, umchaza njenge ngane “eyenza izinto zo-Arts & Culture.” Nyawose engages in a transdisciplinary practice which navigates between curation, filmmaking and photography to produce work rooted in decolonial knowledge production
- Arafa Cynthia Hamadi is a non-binary, multidisciplinary artist working in Tanzania and Kenya. They create artwork in various mediums that address the intersections of the conceptual and the physical, as well as the ephemeral and the permanent, in the hopes of provoking their visitors into considering their daily realities
- Billy Langa is an award-winning actor, playwright and educator. Langa takes a curious approach to theatre that’s deeply relational to the body – puzzling out what theatre means to those who perform it and those who witness it
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- Faizal Mostrixx is a multi-faceted counter-culture visionary and a versatile artist whose distinctive aesthetics are rooted in modern urban narratives, while steeped in ancient African traditions
- Kershan Vikram Pancham is an educator, performative artist and digital and film arts maker. They hold a BSc. in Computer Science from UKZN, a BA and BA Hons from AFDA in Film Writing and Directing, and an MPhil in Diversity Studies from UCT
- Kwanele Finch Thusi is a contemporary dancer, dance teacher, entrepreneur and director. Thusi is currently the lead movement coach for a new dance series that is in partnership with Netflix and Blue Ice Productions
- Lehlogonolo Natalie-Ann Paneng is a multi-disciplinary artist who completed a BADA(Hons) from the University of Witwatersrand in 2018. Photography and videography are her main media, the use of which led to the development of her YouTube channel Hello Nice where she uses her skills in theatre and performance to connect to an online audience
- Lesiba Mabitsela is a South African artist and fashion practitioner who uses performance, video, textiles, and immersive technology to explore a concept or feeling expressed by what he terms ‘cultural homelessness’
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- Lorin Sookool is a South African born independent dancer-choreographer-facilitator. Sookool has worked with a number of choreographers and performed on local and international stages
- Lukhanyiso Skosana is an actress, performance artist, vocalist/composer and theatre-maker. Skosana won a coveted Fleur De Cap Award in 2019
- Mmakhotso Lamola is a South African artist, architect and spatial practitioner based in Cape Town. Her practice can be described as existing at the node of various intersections and is constantly unfolding
- Neo Diseko is a Johannesburg-based visual artist. Diseko obtained their BTech (2017) at the University of Johannesburg. Their artistic practice explores themes around the performativity of gender and its multiple dimensions
- nora chipaumire is a product of colonial education for Africans only – group B schooling, and other studies at the University of Zimbabwe (law) and Mills College (dance) in Oklahoma, California. chipaumire is a four time Bessie Award winner and was a proud recipient of the 2016 Trisha Mckenzie Memorial Award for her impact on the dance community in Zimbabwe, the Guggenheim Fellowship, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, a Doris Duke Artist Award and a Princeton Hodder Fellowship
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- Rehane Abrahams is a writer, theatre-maker and multiple award–winning actor on stage and screen based in Cape Town, South Africa. She has lived and worked in the UK, USA and Indonesia
- Sikhumbuzo Makandula is a Cape Town based visual and performance artist. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from Rhodes University and holds a Masters in Public Spheres and Performance studies from the University Cape Town
- Thelma Ndebele is a non-binary architecture graduate student and DJ (DORMANTYOUTH) whose main interests lie in the intersection of music and architecture. Ndebele insists on the importance of underground music subcultures within architectural discourse concerning urban environments, especially but not exclusively post-apartheid Johannesburg
- Gontse Makhene is an exceptional percussionist born and bred in Soweto with an extensive repertoire, spanning genres across the local and international music scenes. He is a founding member of some of the most revolutionary local and international contemporary bands including Kwani Experience and Shabaka and the Ancestors
- Kresiah Mukwazhi is a multidisciplinary artist whose artistic practice focuses on the empowerment of the female body in relation to patriarchal societal norms and raises questions around belief and conformity
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- Lindiwe Matshikiza is an artist working with writing, directing and performance in a variety of media and modes. She uses her training in theatre-making as a base from which to approach other kinds of work, often collaborative, exploratory projects that take on more than one form
- Luke De Kock is a choreographer and dancer. His latest theatre choreographic works were performed at the Artscape Opera House with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra at the Debut Gala and “Location” at Youngblood Art Gallery
- Mamello Makhetha’s practice uses body-based research to explore her relationship with ‘performance’ and her black x queer x womxn lived experience
- Philiswa Lila is a visual artist and scholar fascinated by the socially relevant and timely issues of authorship and agency. She works across disciplines like painting, installation and performance art. Her interests are in memory histories and theories of personal identities. Lila won the Absa L’Atelier 2018 Gerard Sekoto Award, and
- Heidi Lu is a recent Masters graduate of the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Johannesburg. She was born to a Taiwanese father and an Indian mother and has adopted the role of Time Traveller, Choreographer, and Architect in her work.
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