Our Residency Program

Born in 1999 in Umbumbulu, KwaZulu-Natal, Manelisi Nene is a self-taught South African visual artist whose figurative paintings centre Black figures in reflective, introspective states. Drawing from Ubuntu, childhood memories, and the cultural environment that shaped him, his work explores identity, spirituality, and the quiet power of presence through minimalism, metaphor, and symbolism.

Nene’s practice reflects on the journey of becoming, honouring vulnerability, resilience, and the ongoing search for self-knowledge, while reimagining how personal and collective histories shape contemporary Black experience.

His work often engages with relationships, cultural rituals, iconography, language, and everyday moments, creating a visual archive that documents both intimate and shared experiences.

Through his figurative approach, Nene invites viewers to reflect on the balance between strength and vulnerability, and the liberating potential of embracing an evolving identity.

He has collaborated with various art organisations and foundations, and participated in exhibitions and workshops across Durban, Johannesburg, and Cape Town, steadily establishing his voice within the South African art scene.

Katleho Mosia is an artist of Basotho descent, born in the mountainous region of QwaQwa in the Free State, South Africa. As the first in her family to attend and graduate university, she has become a symbol of possibility within his community. Her postgraduate studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art strengthened a creative voice centred on belonging, displacement, and the complexities of cultural identity.

Rooted in the heritage of the Basotho people, Mosia draws inspiration from the cultural legacy of Lesotho while also engaging with Western influences that shaped much of her upbringing. Her work explores the “third spaces” where these worlds intersect—spaces of hybridity, negotiation, and redefinition. Through this lens, she examines how tradition, modernity, and globalisation continuously shape one another.

Mosia’s family’s migration from QwaQwa to Johannesburg once distanced her from her cultural roots, but through art she actively reclaims and reimagines these connections. Her practice reflects both a personal journey of healing and a broader commentary on cultural exchange and the search for belonging.

Mosia gives thanks to God, the ultimate Creator, whose grace inspires her work. Each piece she creates reflects this spiritual grounding, with the hope that her art touches hearts and honours the divine light that guides her.

Lindokuhle Khumalo (b. 1995) is a visual artist currently living and working in Durban, South Africa. After completing his schooling at Ubuhlebesizwe Secondary School in 2013, he moved from his hometown of eNdwedwe to Durban to study art at the BAT Centre, a community arts and culture hub.

In 2016, Khumalo began pursuing his art practice full-time. That same year, he was selected for a residency at Rorke’s Drift Art and Craft Centre, where he studied textile printing and weaving under the mentorship of Swedish artist Marlin Sellman. During this residency, Khumalo developed a deep interest in working with various materials, which led him to explore mixed media.

Prior to this, his work primarily involved charcoal as he experimented with different mediums. In 2017, he was mentored by artist Sthenjwa Luthuli, who introduced him to Durban’s dynamic art scene and to several established artists.

It was through Luthuli that he met acclaimed visual activist Zanele Muholi, who later invited him to collaborate on the Somnyama Ngonyama project.

In 2019, Khumalo was invited by Galerie Carole Kvasnevski in France to participate in the AKAA (Also Known As Africa) Art Fair in Paris. Since then, his work has been included in various international art fairs and group exhibitions.

Khumalo’s work is part of several prominent collections, including the South African National Art Bank, the Schulting Art Collection, the Batra Family Collection, and other private collections. In 2023, he was awarded an art grant for a three-month residency (May to July) in Bremen, Germany.

B. 1996 David Madlabane, professionally known as David Blakc, is a Johannesburg-based visual artist and multidisciplinary creative entrepreneur whose practice spans an array of mediums.

Continuously expanding his craft, he specializes in traditional printmaking techniques-including linocut, silkscreen, and etching-and has honed his expertise through roles such as studio assistant at Artist Proof Studio's pro shop and William Kentridge's renowned studio.

Recognized for his dynamic contributions to the arts, Madlabane garnered the People's Choice Award at the prestigious Strauss & Co Art Competition and secured first prize in a collaborative project with Artist Proof Studio and luxury brand Cartier at the FNB Joburg Art Fair.

His artistic acclaim further includes being amed a finalist for the Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize while his works reside in notable collections such as he Legacy Group, with pieces displayed at Johannesburg's iconic Building The Leonardo.

Recently, Madlabane has expanded his collaborative reach, partnering with institutions like the Los Angeles Printmaking Society and continuing his long-standing relationship with Artist Proof Studio.

With a vision to transcend borders, he aims to solidify his presence as a professional artist on the global stage, merging technical mastery with innovative cross-cultural dialogue.

Khanya Zibaya is a multidisciplinary storyteller born in a small village in the Eastern Cape. He now lives and works in Johannesburg. His practice spans visual performance, experimental video, painting, sculpture, installation, and photography—often incorporating bodies and found objects to create striking contrasts of lived realities.

Zibaya’s work brings attention to subjects often overlooked. Drawing from personal experiences with themes of the discarded, he creates multidisciplinary pieces that challenge viewers to confront what is usually left unseen. Through performance-based visual art, he invites audiences to see themselves reflected in what he calls “euphemisms of life.” By manipulating everyday materials tied to the quiet violences of human behavior, he reveals these distortions and the systems that enable them.

With a keen interest in how people reshape their relationships with the mundane, Zibaya explores the fluid ways individuals influence—and are influenced by—social structures. This inquiry drives his innovative approach and his commitment to exposing the persistent, often unnoticed patterns embedded in the familiar.

His group exhibitions include The Portrait Show (Through The Lens Collective, Johannesburg, 2023), Got Junk GoldFingers (The Fourth Gallery, Cape Town, 2023), Post Fair Blues (The Fourth Gallery, Cape Town, 2023), The Wildest Most Beautiful Ugly (Too Tired Project, Digital, 2023), Investec Cape Town Art Fair (Vela Projects, 2025), and LagosPhoto Biennial, Nigeria (2025).

Zibaya matriculated from Lakehaven Secondary in Durban in 2014 before studying Acting in Camera at City Varsity (2015). He later trained in Acting, Writing, and Directing at the Market Theatre Laboratory (2018–2021). He has completed residencies at Through The Lens Collective (2023–2024), DAC on Dorp (2024), and The 3rd Space Residency (2025).

His work has been recognised by the National Arts Festival Student Theatre Awards (Best Actor(s) and Best Writer(s), 2019), Where The Leaves Fall Magazine (Winner, 2023), Photo Tool 10:10 (2023), LagosPhoto Portfolio Review (2023), CAP Prize (Shortlisted, 2024), Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize (Top 8 Finalist, 2024), and Void x Futures Photography (Shortlist, 2025).

Zibaya’s acting, directing, and writing experience includes productions such as Vodacom World (Industrial Theatre, 2019), Le Journal (Market Theatre Laboratory, 2019), Indulge Your Senses (2019), How to Crack a Coconut (2018), Babylon Beyond Borders (2018), Actors Looking for Directors (2018), and Words Fail (2019).

Songezo Zantsi is a painter who grew up with his grandparents in Alice, a historically significant town in the Eastern Cape, and he now lives and works in Cape Town.

Zantsi’s works capture poignant moments of human interaction, drawing on a long lineage of realist painting. His natural poses and gestures reflect the social realities that shape the culture around him. His quick, muddy brushstrokes reveal a distinctive style influenced by modernist artists such as Walter Sickert, Gerard Sekoto, and Winslow Homer. Using wet and semi-dried oil paint applied with worn brushes, he creates a soft, loose rhythm paired with strong compositional precision.

Working from his own photographs, as well as images sourced from personal and national archives, Zantsi explores the often fraught connection between contemporary life and the recent past. His subjects range from children playing in the street to elderly women confronting someone suspected of political espionage; from a man walking home with groceries to a procession of horseback riders at a traditional wedding.

Together, these scenes form what he describes as “a visual archive of life in South Africa,” revealing persistent patterns within an evolving cultural landscape.

In 2022, Zantsi held his first solo exhibition, Iinkumbulo, followed by Iyabulela Ilali at Vela Projects in 2024. He has also participated in group exhibitions at the Association of Visual Arts (2021) and Youngblood Gallery (2022), both in Cape Town.

Andile Bhala, a Fujifilm Ambassador based in Soweto, South Africa, is a distinguished documentary and commercial photographer. In addition to his photographic practice, Bhala is an accomplished photography lecturer and facilitator.

He has earned recognition through several prestigious photography awards and was a finalist at the Thami Mnyele Fine Arts Awards.

His work is informed by his upbringing and offers nuanced reflections on various communities within contemporary South Africa, with a focus on capturing the complexities of real stories.

Bhala's uBUDODA series was first exhibited during his incubator program at the Market Photo Workshop in 2018, later featured at the Addis Ababa Foto Fest.

His acclaimed God Moves series was exhibited at the Arles International Festival in 2023 and 2024.

Born on March 14 in Benoni, South Africa, Collen Silumko Mfazwe is a Johannesburg-based photographer, videographer, and trans activist. His creative journey began in 2012 with a visual arts course through the Curriculum Development Project (CDP), alongside early advocacy work with Uthingo The Rainbow and the Rainbow Activist Alliance.

Collen later studied photography at the Market Photo Workshop and received film training through News From Home (NFH). His practice spans photography and filmmaking, driven by a commitment to community storytelling. He has worked with organisations such as Inkanyiso, ActionAid South Africa (AASA), and GALA Queer Archive, contributing to projects that preserve and uplift LGBTQI+ histories.

Internationally recognised, Collen has completed several residencies and exhibited in Oslo, Berlin, Zurich, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and Johannesburg. He received the Best Photographer award at the LGBTI Recognition Awards in 2013.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, he produced Geleza (2021), a short documentary on artist Nonkululeko Mthunzi, and later directed Road to Life (2023), a film about Sphiwe Nyonyane. These works further cement his role as a storyteller focused on meaningful, often overlooked narratives.

Collen continues to expand his craft through ongoing collaborations, including with Muholi Productions/Muholi Arts Institute (MAI) in Cape Town. He is represented by Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery in the United States, and his work forms part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC.

Noluthando Mbuyisa, artistically known as Dlozi.M, was born in KwaZulu-Natal in the small village of Egunjaneni in Mtubatuba, South Africa. She later grew up in Gauteng, where she completed her Fine Art degree and established herself as both an art facilitator and an art and design educator.

Her artistic practice is deeply influenced by impressionism, expressionism, colour layering, African cultural traditions, the work of Dr Esther Mahlangu, and beadwork. These inspirations intersect with her calling as a healer and her spiritual journey, which play a significant role in how she conceptualizes and creates her work.

Dlozi.M’s recent body of work merges painting with beadwork. Her use of beads within the composition expresses emotional and spiritual energies that reflect the dynamic nature of African life. Beadwork becomes her visual language—one that speaks to the heart and soul of spirituality and cultural diversity. The frequent use of white and blue beads symbolizes isithunywa and water spirits—water representing life, cleansing, and her spiritual space of healing. Through her practice, she uses art as a tool for mental, emotional, and spiritual restoration, living with the purpose to heal, educate, inspire, and enlighten.

On her spiritual path, Mbuyisa’s work is guided by God, isithunywa (prayer warriors), and her royal ancestral spirits (amakhosi). Their presence informs the emotions, messages, and visions embedded in each piece. A notable example is TUNAPAMBANA NA ROHO (Spiritual War), created in 2023, a work developed through ancestral guidance by interpreting images revealed within background colours. It embodies healing narratives that speak to the complexities of human reality.

Who is Dlozi.M? She is the ancestral spirit of protection and healing, walking with the guidance and blessing of the Mbuyisa ancestral lineage and kings.

South African-born visual artist, activist and photographer Lulu Mhlana (Nolubabalo) (b.1993) is from the Eastern Cape and currently works and lives in Cape Town.

Mhlana is one of the country's foremost young photographers exploring representations of gender identity and non-binary bodies. They became as a self-trained lens-based artist after her Diploma in Business Communications from the Tshwane University of Technology (2014).

She was awarded the Zanele Muholi Scholarship in Technical Photography at Cape Town School of Photography (2018).

Mhlana centres her practice around the intimacy of black bodies and black existence in rewriting the current and historical narratives of blackness. The folds of memory in the quiet moments of skin and culture layers the sensitivity and poise in her work.

Through Documentary Photography Mhlana forged a unique position as woman in documenting the intricate and sacred custom of male initiation through the partnership and guidance of her mother’s organisation Ubuntu Care and Development that prepares young men with skillsets into adulthood ahead of their initiation, amongst other social issues.

In this regard the body in relation to cultural identity as a subject through sacredness is introduced in her work.

Switching in between the mediums of Documentary Photography and Self-Portraiture, under the tutelage of Lindeka Qampi and Zanele Muholi, her flagship project, Ubumnyama Bam was realised in 2019.

Her work is a personal and shared archive of blackness, and continues to contribute to the lack of representation of the black body in mainstream media.

Yvette was born in Wellington, a small town just outside of Cape Town, in South Africa.

Through the years, Yvette has always been attracted to the arts, whether in the form of music, architecture or acting. While never seeing herself as a visual artist, this all changed when settling back into life in South Africa after living abroad in Dubai for many years. Simple doodles soon morphed into complex forms and her black line drawings took on a life of their own. 

Yvette combines her appreciation for the smallest and most seemingly trivial detail that surrounds our lives with a deep desire to spread positivity and happiness to create mesmerising yet calming pieces that are inspired by subject matter surrounding her. 

Kabelo Moraloki was born in 1988 in Mamelodi, a township in the City of Tshwane. He first encountered art during his primary school years, often copying his uncle’s drawings. In grade four, he befriended Thomas Aphane, a talented young artist, whose influence deepened Kabelo’s love for drawing.

Kabelo has been actively practicing art since 2013, initially working at the Mamelodi Arts and Crafts Forum (MACFO) until 2015. He then moved to Pretoria, where he shared a studio with fellow artists at the Old Fire Station.

In 2019, he joined the Botaki ba Afrika art residency, continuing here until January 2020. The following year, in 2021, he was awarded an art residency at the Pape Funds Headquarters in Sandton. In April 2023, Kabelo relocated to Cape Town and participated in a Capacity Building Programme for Emerging Artists, organized by the City of Cape Town.

He is currently mentored by Richard Kilpert, former Head of Education at Zeitz MOCAA, and Devon Anderson, a Fashion Design lecturer at the University of Cape Town.

In 2024, Kabelo was selected as a winner of the Woolworths Youth Makers 2024, with his work showcased in selected stores. He now practices from his home studio in Gardens, Cape Town.

Born 2003, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hugo Kabeya’s work centers on creating introspective and intimate yet widely relatable conversations, rooted in lived experience as a young immigrant navigating life in South Africa, a country still in its formative stages of democracy.

Being self-taught, his practice is grounded in site-specific research that fosters collective reflection and connection, particularly as they explore the socio-political landscapes shaping both individual and collective consciousness.

Working across various media, Kabeya examines the intricate interplay between personal and historical narratives, often unearthing the layered complexities of erased histories, migration, environmental struggle, displacement, and social upheaval. As a research and experimentation-led artist, he continually seeks new forms of narration, often through the use of materials imbued with cultural and historical significance.

For instance, materials like jute and hessian are reinterpreted into living, breathing tapestries that carry the weight of forgotten stories or those obscured by dominant historical narratives.

This spirit of discovery has also led to experimentation with more unconventional materials, such as mercury cinnabar and lace, used in a site-specific project in Idrija, Slovenia. This particular work focused on preserving chronicles at risk of being lost in a rapidly advancing world, reinforcing their ongoing commitment to capturing and re-contextualizing narratives often left at the margins.

Kabeya’s most recent solo show, Uneathearthing: Mercury & Cobalt, opened in Idrija, Slovenia. His most recent group presentation, And Yet We Imagine, opened at The Desmond and Leah Foundation in April 2025.

Other shows include Routes of Resistance at the District Six Museum in Cape Town and the Skissernas Museum in Sweden (2024). He has been awarded a residency for a cross-border project through IoDeposito placed between Italy and Slovenia which he took up in May 2025.

This residency resulted in an awe-inspiring exhibition that connects and relates mining heritage in the town of Idrija, Slovenia and the artist’s home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo. The exhibition took place at the Hg Tolipnica Smelter Museum, a World Heritage Site.