Khanyisile Mbongwa

Khanyisile Mbongwa (1984-) is a Cape Town-based artist and curator.

Biography

Born in Gugulethu, she trained as an artist and focuses on performance-based practice and uses photomontage, sound and video to engage with the re-imagining of psychological and physical spaces.

Contribution to SA theatre, film, media and/or performance

She is engaged in her Masters in Interdisciplinary Art, public art and public sphere at the Institute of Creative Arts, University of Cape Town (UCT), undertaking research on "iRhanga" ("township alleyways") as public spaces that provide another entry or exit point for thinking about blackness and self.

Mbongwa was at one time a board member of the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) in 2008 and is a former Executive Director for Handspring Puppetry Trust.

She has been engaged in various curatorial and artistic projects over the years, including Demonstrations: Performing Being Black (2013) at Brundyn+ Gallery, a two part exhibition that focused on photography, installation pieces and performances in township public spaces; a collaborative performance piece titled My Body Is Not An Apology with Buhlebezwe Siwani and Thando Doni; What Will We Tell Freedom? (2016), a public intervention performances kwaLanga as part of Africa Centre’s Infecting The City festival; in 2017 she did kuDanger! as part of her study, a work imaging what a free black child looks like and in February 2018 curated a series of presentations under the title iRhanga (Township Alleyways) in the Cape Town inner city.

For more on her curatorial and performance activities, see the entry on her in the CAT Cologne website at http://www.catcologne.org/en/project/blueprint-love-as-a-strategy-khanyisile-mbongwa-sa/