About
Sethembile Msezane was born in 1991 in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. She lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. She was awarded a Masters in Fine Arts in 2017 from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, where she also completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2012.
Using interdisciplinary practice encompassing photography, painting, live works/embodiments, film, sculpture and installation. Msezane creates commanding works heavy with spiritual and political symbolism. The artist explores issues around spirituality, commemoration and African knowledge systems. She processes her dreams as a medium through a lens of the plurality of existence across space and time, asking questions about the remembrance of ancestry. Part of her work has examined the processes of mythmaking which are used to construct history, calling attention to the absence of the black female body in both the narratives and physical spaces of historical commemoration.
Msezane participated in the 13th Bamako Encounters African Biennale of Photography (2022), she completed a residency at Central Saint Martins, London (2022), she participated in the 14th Dak’art Biennale (2022), she was a UEA Global Talent Fellow hosted by the Sainsbury Research Unit and Sainsbury Centre (2021). She was Mellon Artist Residency Fellow in partnership with Gallery of the University of Stellenbosch and the English Department (2020), she is a National Institute for Human Social Sciences Award nominee (2020), OkayAfrica 100 women 2018 Honoree. Msezane was a TEDGlobal Speaker in Arusha, Tanzania (2017). She was a TAF & Sylt Emerging Artist Residency Award winner (TASA) (2016). Msezane is the first recipient of the Rising Light award at the Mbokodo Awards (2016). She is a Barclays L’Atelier Top 10 Finalist (2016). She is a Sasol New Signatures Merit Award winner (2015).
Msezane’s work has been widely exhibited across South Africa and internationally and was included in various exhibitions and museums that include the 14th Dak’art Biennale, Zeitz MOCAA (Cape Town), as well as that of the Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town), The Royal Ontario Museum (Canada), Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Brazil) and more.
Recent solo presentations include Liguqubele iZulu, BKhz Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2023), Let The Emerald Village Carry Me, Lethaby Gallery, London, England (2022); ISIMO, Cecile Fakhoury, Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire (2022), Nibizwa Ngabangcele, Sainsbury Center,Norwich, England (2021), Isimo, Gallery of the University Stellenbosch, South Africa (2021), Speaking Through Walls, Tyburn Gallery, London, England (2019); All Things Being Equal…, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa (2017) and Kwasuka Sukela, Gallery MoMo, Cape Town, South Africa (2017).
Recent group exhibitions Unruly Kinship, Temporary Gallery, Colgone, Germany (2023), Abadali, Rosebank Keyes Art Mile, Johannesburg, South Africa (2023), Invisibilities, OSUN Center For Human Rights And The Arts at Bard College, USA (2021), This is Not Africa – Unlearn What You Have Learned, ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark (2021), Photoworks Festival, UK (2020), African Cosmologies, Fotofest Biennial, Houston, USA (2020), Tomorrow there Will be More of Us, Stellenbosch Triennale. Cape Town, South Africa (2020), Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Smith Gallery. Cape Town. South Africa (2020), Now Look Here: The African Art of Appearance, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2020), N,Golá Biennial, Sõa Tomè n Príncipe (2019)), Ngoma: Art and Cosmology, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg (2019), Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Dancing on a Volcano, Lagos Photo Festival, Lagos, Nigeria (2018), L’envol, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France (2018), Not a Single Story, NIROX Foundation, South Africa, and Wan s Konst, Sweden (2018), Cape to Tehran, Gallery MoMo, Cape Town, South Africa (2018); The Winter Sculpture Fair, Nirox Foundation Sculpture Park, Johannesburg, South Africa (2017); Re[as]sisting Narratives, Framer Framed, Amsterdam, Netherlands (2016); Women’s Work, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2016); Dance, if you want to enter my country! / Global Citizen, GoetheOnMain, Johannesburg, South Africa (2016) and iQhiya, The AVA Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2016).
In 2019 she performed Signal Her Return III at the New Art Exchange in Nottingham. 2018, she staged a performance for the ICA Arts Live Festival in Cape Town, as well as performing at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen, as part of the conference Changing Global Hierarchies of Value? Museums, artifacts, frames, and flows, organized in association with the University of Copenhagen. She also performed at dOCUMENTA 14 in 2017 in both Athens, Greece, and Kassel, Germany, as part of iQhiya Collective. She has participated in residencies including the Sylt Foundation, Emerging Artist Residency, Sylt and Künstlerhuser Worpswede, Germany (2017), and the Situate Arts Lab Residency, Hobart, Australia (2016).
EXHIBITIONS
2023 Liguqubele iZulu, BKhz, Johannesburg, South Africa
Unruly Kinship, Temporary Gallery, Colgone, Germany
Abadali, Rosebank Keyes Art Mile, Johannesburg, South Africa
2022 Speaking Through Walls, Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono, 13th Bamako Encounters African Biennale of Photography, Bamako, Mali
UkuKhanya,, Ĩ Ndaffa#, 14th Dak’art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal
And She Was Wearing Trousers: A Call to Out Heroines, Arts House, Melbourne, Australia
2021 Nibizwa Ngabangcwele, Sainsbury Centre, Norwich, UK
ISIMO, Online Exhibition, Gus Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa
2020 ARCOLisboa online edition, Movart, Lisbon, Portugal
Now Look Here, The African Art of Appearance, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Ĩ’NDAFFA, Forger/Out of the fire’, 14th Dak’art Biennale, Dakar, Senegal. (Postponed)
African Cosmologies, Fotofest Biennial, Houston, USA.
Tomorrow there Will be More of Us, Stellenbosch Triennale. Cape Town, South Africa.
Investec Cape Town Art Fair. Smith Gallery. Cape Town. South Africa
2019 Speaking Through Walls, Tyburn Gallery, London (solo)
Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2018 Unframed, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town (solo)
Dancing on a Volcano, Lagos Photo Festival, Lagos, Nigeria
L’envol, La Maison Rouge, Paris, France
Not a Single Story, NIROX Foundation, South Africa, and Wanås Konst, Sweden
Cape to Tehran, Gallery MoMo, Cape Town, South Africa
2017 All Things Being Equal, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (solo)
1:54 Contemporary Art Fair, London
The Portrait (performance as part of iQhiya), Documenta14, Athens
Monday (performance as part of iQhiya), Documenta14, Kassel
Umoya- A Quiet Revolution, FNB Joburg Art Fair, Johannesburg (solo)
Dis(colour)ed Margins, National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare
Kwasuka Sukela- Reimagined Bodies of (South African) 1990's Born Woman, Gallery Momo, Cape Town (solo)
The Winter Sculpture Fair, Nirox Foundation Sculpture Park, Johannesburg, South Africa
2016 Re[as]sisting Narritives, Framer Framed, Amsterdam
The Art of Disruptions, the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town
Azania- What will be Remembered, What will be Forgotten? (performance), GIPCA, Cape Town
#theopening, Greatmore Studios, Cape Town
Dance, if you want to enter my country!/ Global Citizen, GoetheOnMain, Johannesburg
2015 Love in the Time of Afrophobia at VryfeesKunstefees and AVA Open Stoep Residency, Bloemfontein, Cape Town
Ellipsis (performance) at Infecting the City, Cape Town
Krotoa (performance) at Grid Biennial Cape Town, Art Meets Camera
Translations, Reed College, Emergent Art Space, Portland Oregon
2014 Public Performances and Exhibitions:
Human Rights Day, CT Worker’s Day, CT
Freedom Day, CT Women’s Day, CT
Youth Day, JHB Day of Reconciliation, JHB
Anywhere the Wind Blows, Brundyn + exhibition, JHB
2013 Camouflage, Circa Gallery, JHB
Heritage Day (performance), CT
2012 MOP5 festival, Lovell Gallery, CT Mistakes exhibition, CT
CMYK, Circa Gallery, JHB Manifestations of Self,YoungBlood, CT
Michaelis School of Fine art Graduate’s exhibition, CT
2011 Gross Examination, Michaelis, CT
Republic performance, Gipca, CT
A Negro Speaks of Rivers exhibition, Magnet Theatre, CT