Malik Ntone Edjabe
Malik Ntone Edjabe is a performer, researcher, cultural organiser and film editor based in Cape Town, South Africa. Since 2014, he has, predominantly under the banner of This Thing Is Plural, curated various projects, events and interventions dedicated to new imaginative and intellectual territory. In 2016, he founded AstroClutterFilms, a multimedia production studio for critical dialogue, storytelling and cultural output more generally of and about the African continent. Through his work with People’s Education (2015 – present), Matsang (2016 - 2019) and Feelings Radio Project (2020 – present), and more recently under the pseudonym Hypcorite, Malik’s practice has centred on the use of an improvisational methodology called ‘Freespace’.
M. Hayden
M. Hayden recently completed a PhD in History of Art at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her doctoral research investigates the significance of the black-white-red triad in the San rock paintings of southern Africa. The Wits citation for her doctoral study, in part, described her research as follows:
“Dr Hayden’s research tackles the complex topic of colour in southern African San rock painting. She employs a triad of black, red and white as a heuristic device, which is an aesthetic structure observed in other artistic traditions in Africa. Through a close examination of select panels from sites across South Africa, she explores how colour is applied in dialogue with the rock surface in expressions of a great variety that also change over time, linked also to the primary ingredients used to make the paint. She shows how colour is not an abstract visual attribute, but is linkable to other properties of the physical world and to colour-related ideas in the ethnography, pointing to a wider system of values within San society. Through intricate analysis of specific depictions of humans, animals and other forms, she explores how black, white and red with its dyadic complimentary yellow are deployed for balance, contrast, transformation and liminality. She reveals the colourful richness of what can be seen in the art and the fundamental role that colour played in the San creative process.”
Her recent papers and presentations include: The missing locusts: conservation and management of San rock art at Kaoxa’s Shelter, Mapungubwe National Park (2022) – Savanna Science Networking Meeting, Kruger National Park, South Africa; A discourse on colour: assessing aesthetic patterns in the swift people panel at Ezeljagdspoort, Western Cape, South Africa (2020) McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge Publication and (2016) The Pasts and Presence of Art in South Africa: Technologies, Ontologies and Agents Conference Paper, University of Cambridge – Centre of African Studies and The British Museum, United Kingdom; Inverted Rainbow: the aesthetics of San celestial phenomena at the rainbow mystery shelter in the Cederberg, Western Cape, South Africa (2019) European Association of Archaeologists Conference Paper, Switzerland.
She completed her Master of Arts in Museum Studies at Seton Hall University and Bachelor of Arts in Art History at Clark Atlanta University. Her professional experience includes managing art collections, facilitating preservation practices and teaching at notable arts organisations, museums and educational institutions. Additional interests include art historical theory and an interdisciplinary approach to rock art studies which entails investigation on colour symbolism, the creative process and the intersectionality of San visual and literary aesthetics.
Danielle Isler
Danielle Isler is a social scientist, researcher and activist. She holds an M.A. in African Studies at the University of Basel (Switzerland) and is a doctoral student at the University of Bayreuth (Germany). She is a BIGSAS (Bayreuth International School of African Studies) Junior Fellow and part of the working group ‘Anthropology of Global Inequalities’ led by Prof. Dr. Schramm. In her doctoral project, she investigates Whitened spaces in South Africa. Among other things, she aims to find out how such spaces are constructed, how they produce exclusions and how political subjectivities, embodiment, trauma and memory (can) influence Whitened spaces and vice versa.
Her research interests include Anthropology of Global Inequalities, Urban Anthropology, Border Studies, Critical Whiteness Studies, Racism and Racialization, Decolonization, Pigmentocracy, Intersectionality and Embodiment.
Danielle Isler is also a curator, musician, and performer.
Bulumko Mbete
Bulumko Mbete, born in 1995, is a Joburg based artist and writer with multicultural heritage.
Mbete completed her BFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art.
In her artistic practice. She is interested in materiality; through using textile, beading, and
weaving; she creates a framework to communicate generational traditions and gestures of love.
Her interests also expand into ways of engaging with the archive and using the archive for creative
storytelling. In this pursuit, she uses archival matter such as photographs, textiles, and clothes.
Mbete explores the geographic connections and synchronicities within her family in relation to
South African history and its effect on migration, labour, farming and love.
Bulumko is expanding her creative exploits through experiments in curation or creating spaces for
gathering and conversation. Her current project is titled Memory Proceeding which explores the
studio practices of 11 artists and creatives. The exhibition/project space involves the display of
studio experiments and completed works as a site of discussion which will reflect on how artists
establish techniques and areas of focus within their practices. Looking specifically at the ways
that they are influenced by their interests in history, sustainability, cityscapes, home and shifting
cultural narratives.
Dr. Mlondolozi Zondi
Dr. Mlondolozi (Mlondi) Zondi is a Provost Postdoctoral Associate and later Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature (Fall 2023) at the University of Southern California. Currently, Mlondi is working on a book project that studies critical Black artistic practices which tend-toward the dead. Mlondi’s work has been published or forthcoming in The Drama Review(TDR), ASAP Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, Mortality, and Propter Nos.