People
Gabi Ngcobo
Gabi Ngcobo is a Johannesburg based curator and artist. She is the co-founder of the collaborative platform “Center for Historical Reenactments” (CHR) and faculty member at the Wits University School of Arts. Her collaborative and individual projects include: “Second to None” at the South African National Gallery (2005), “Olvida quen soy/ Erase me from who I am” at CAAM, Canary Islands, Las Palmas (2005), “CAPE07” (2007) and “Scratching the Surface Vol. 1” Cape Town (2008). Ngcobo co-curated “Rope-a-dope: to win a losing war” (2010) at Cabinet, New York, “Second Coming, a curatorial collaboration” at Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and “Just How Cold Was It?” at 6-8 Months, project space, NYC.
She was the curator of “DON'T/PANIC,” (2011) an exhibition coinciding with the 17th Climate Change summit (COP17) in Durban. Recently she was awarded the first POOL Curatorial fellowship, and her exhibition “some a little sooner, some a little later” opened at the Zurich POOL/LUMA Westbau space in June 2013.
As a member of CHR, she curated “PASS-AGES: references & footnotes” at the former Pass Office in Johannesburg and contributed to the project “Xenoglossia, a research project,” culminating in 2013 in an exhibition in Johannesburg. Ngcobo is a graduate of the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, New York.
Sohrab Mohebbi
Sohrab Mohebbi is a writer and curator currently based in Los Angeles. His curatorial projects include Hassan Khan: The Hidden Location (Queens Museum of Art, 2011), Rope-a-Dope (co-curated with Gabi Ngcobo) (Cabinet, 2010), For All the Wrong Reasons (Center for Curatorial Studies, 2010), and Strike a Pose (co-curated with Özge Ersoy) for Bidoun Projects 2010. Recipient of a 2010 Montehermoso research grant for the project Visual Parrhesia. His writings have been published in Bidoun, where he is a contributing editor, as well as inArtforum, Art Agenda, e-flux journal, and Modern Painters, among others. Mohebbi was the 2010 curatorial fellow at Queens Museum of Art. He taught at Otis College of Art and Design and is currently Assistant Curator at REDCAT in LA.
Kemang Wa Lehulere
Kemang Wa Lehulere was born in Cape Town and lives in Johannesburg. He has a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand (2011). Solo exhibitions have taken place at Lombard-Freid Projects, New York (2013); Stevenson, Johannesburg (2012); the Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg (2011) and the Association of Visual Arts in Cape Town (2009). Group shows include The Ungovernables, the second triennial exhibition of the New Museum in New York (2012); A Terrible Beauty is Born, the 11th Biennale de Lyon at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France (2011) andWhen Your Lips Are My Ears, Our Bodies Become Radios at the Kunsthalle Bern and Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland (2010). Wa Lehulere was a co-founder of the Gugulective (2006), an artist-led collective based in Cape Town, and is a founding member of the Center for Historical Reenactments in Johannesburg. He was the winner of the inaugural Spier Contemporary Award in 2007, the MTN New Contemporaries Award in 2010, and the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts in 2012, and was one of two young artists awarded the 15th Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel in 2013. He was also the recipient of an Ampersand Foundation residency in New York in 2012..
Donna Kukama
Donna Kukama is a creative practitioner working in performance, video, and sound. She completed her postgraduate studies at the Ecole Cantonale d'Art du Valais in Sierre (Switzerland) in 2008 under MAPS (Master of Arts in the Public Sphere) and is currently a faculty member at the WITS University School of Arts in Johannesburg. Kukama has presented work in various group exhibitions, including My Joburg at the Maison Rouge and Staatliche Kunstsammlugen (2013), Connections at the Kunsthalle Luzern (2012), and On Screen: Global Intimacy at the Krannert Art Museum (2009) and Bermuda National Gallery (2011). She has participated and performed in various art fairs, including the Joburg Art Fair in 2009, 2012, and 2013, Art Miami 2009, and ARCO Madrid 2010. Her performance-based work was presented in the Biennale de Lyon as well the Venice Biennale (under the SA Pavilion) in 2013. Award nominations include the MTN New Contemporaries Award (2010), the Ernst Schering Award (2011), and the Visible Award (2011). She is the recipient of the 2014 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for performance art.
Sanele Manqele
Sanele Manqele is a Fine Arts graduate of the Wits School of Arts, University of Witwatersrand where she majored in photography and video installation. In 2012 she completed a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Brand Leadership with specialization in management at Vega School of Brand Communications. Since graduating, Manqele has been working in art administrative roles and has been engaged in creative projects around Johannesburg. In 2011 Manqele took part in a six-month long internship made possible by the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) and Africalia at the Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR). As part of her internship she conceptualised and realised an event titled “Concrete Picnic” at the CHR project space. She has also contributed her own video work to the archive for “Xenoglossia, a research project.”
Manqele became a member of CHR at the completion of her internship and has been involved in a number of CHR projects; “Na Ku Randza,” “Fr(agile)”, “What Happened 20*81” and “The Exuberance Project” in which she spoke on a panel entitled “Abundance”.
She has worked with a number of local arts organizations including Wits School of Arts’ “Dislocated Studios”, as part of The Substation Residencies and the Goethe Institut in The Joburg Art/Moving Africa Project. Manqele has also worked as the manager at Sibisi The Object of Art Gallery at Melrose Arch and as project coordinator for “The United African Utopias”, as a part of “Spines” a project by the Goethe Institut. In March 2011 Manqele co-curated the exhibition “Alptraum” at the Goethe Institut.
Manqele was appointed as the Project Coordinator and photographer for The Rhona Gorvy Art Trust in 2011 having worked as the Archive Photographer for the Art Trust two years prior. In 2012 Manqele worked as Gallery Manager at Sibisi The Object of Art, in both logistical operational tasks and creating the curatorial direction of the gallerie’s exhibitions.
Most recently Manqele worked as a project coordinator for The United African Utopias, as a part of “Spines” a project by the Goethe Institut.
Manqele is currently working as the Gallery Manager for Arteye Gallery in Johannesburg and Cape Town
Mbali Khoza
Mbali Khoza was born in 1989 in Johannesburg where she lives and works. In 2012 she obtained a BA in Fine Art from the University of Witwatersrand in 2012. She works mainly in video, installation and performance, which she uses to translate and express her understanding of language and literature as modes of communication. Khoza was the co-winner of the 2011 Martienssen Prize titled “Original/Copy” andwas finalist for the 2012 Martiensen Prize titled“Too Much Information?”.
Khoza’s work has been featured exhibitions locally and internationally:
Gwanza Month of Photography at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare (2011)
Rechewed at the Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR) in Johannesburg (2011)
Out of Thin Air, at Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town (2012)
Café Exchange at the Wits School of Arts, Substation (2012)
Streetlights in Johannesburg (2012)
Dis/Play, Goethe-on-Main, Johannesburg (2012)
We are Absolutely Ending This with CHR, Johannesburg (2012)
After-after Tears, with CHR at The New Museum, Museum as Hub, New York (2013). The Difference Loom Iziko Museums, Cape Town (2013)
Regions A-G at the Johannesburg City Library (2013)
Do It Like a collaboration with Georgia Munnik in Johannesburg (2013).
Ngceboyethu Jocelyn Ndlovu
lives in Johannesburg. He is an Honors Fine Arts student at the University of the Witwatersrand. In 2012 he won the annual Martienssen Art Prize and in 2013 received a Merit Award for the same art prize. Ndlovu’s practice takes the form of a conversation as medium employed in order to realize, imitate, reflect and execute a mode within the visual arts. In any social engagement he is interested in the process of vocally mediating and activating the idea of an artwork in people's minds, amongst whatever presumed expectations, as a viable way of fabricating "true art." Through his perfomative gestures he provides audience members, regardless of intellectual background, a platform to tap into/ unpack complex art processes in their freshest state.
Recent Engagements
1. “I've been counting curtain hooks for the past month”: A conversation (2012)
2. “Floating Studio”: Speaking school locker installation (2012-13)
3. “Finding a Way”: Monologue Speech (2013)
4. “A Point of Praxis”: Toilet Business Meeting (2013)
5. It looked better in my mind: mirror discussion/ private rant monologue (2013)
6. A Vocal Description of a Room: public confession over lunch (2013)
7. Center for Historical Reenactments:– Intern and Website & Content Manager (2013
