Jury 2021

Chi aka Chimurengsa (b. 1978, Robert Machiri ) is a Zimbabwean multidisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg.

Machiri’s work exists at the juncture of two streams of practice: his curatorial concepts and a multi-disciplinary production of artworks. His works draw on de-colonial discourses that are presented through embodied critique, learning and unlearning, interweaving sound, music and image making.

His most notable project Pungwe is an inter-disciplinary project circling African soundings with related contemporary arts discourses and spaces. Pungwe has produced collaborative works Pungwe Nights, Listening to a Listening at Pungwe and Sugar free///Pungwe.

Refilwe Nkomo is a Johannesburg-based social practice artist, curator, educator and producer creating cultural and artistic interventions, programs and installations using various mediums including performance, video, text and movement at the intersection of arts and social justice.

She has founded and co-founded numerous organizations and platforms including We Are Here (WAH), a non-profit organization working with men and boys to dismantle gender-based violence.

She is a 2019/20 Clore Chevening Fellow and currently serves as the Director of the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA). She is interested in memory, the archive, feminisms, afro-futurity, black performance theory, trauma, affect, and social change.

Scott Eric Williams is an award-winning artist (Andrew Mellon Fellowship 2019) and youth educator from Cape Town, South Africa.

Williams uses diverse media, ranging from woven sculpture and wheatpaste to photography, zines and performance art. Through his use of site-specific materials Williams’ work contemplates the archive, migration, trade and intangible heritage within inner-city contexts by using contemporary urban visual languages. 

He frequently employs allegories of a sci-fi nature and elements of play to plot cartographies of rogue urbanisms.

Williams is educated via an alternate curriculum structured through residencies and workshops such as Joule City - Cape Town (2013), Openlab -Free State Art Festival, Bloemfontein, South Africa (2016) and Situate Lab, Tasmania (2018). He has exhibited and performed at The Free State Art Festival, Gallery MOMO, Geumgang Nature Art Biennale, ICA online Fellowship, UCT Michaelis & the Gallery of the University of Stellenbosch – amongst others.

As a founding member of the collective Burning Museum he has exhibited at The Centre for African Studies – University of Cape Town, Brundyn+, Kunsthaus Dresden and on the streets of Cape Town. His other work includes Youth Facilitation at The District Six Museum and others, as well as writing for various print & online platforms. Currently Williams is a Masters candidate at The University of Stellenbosch researching socially engaged forms of youth arts education within the informal sector.

Suzana Sousa, independent curator and writer. Fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at the UWC and at the africaasacountry.com researching Angolan cultural policy.

Co-curator of the exhibition Kiximbi: meditations on the middle passage and other Atlantic Phantoms for the South South Veza platform in 2021 and The Power of My Hands currently at the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, part of the Saison Africa 2020.

She also developed with Dana Whabira and Njelele Art Station the podcast Concepts of Love.