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Absa L'Atelier 2024 / Gerad Sekoto Award Winners Reflective Exhibtion

20 years Gerad Sekoto winners reflective exhibition
Billie Zangewa - 2004
Billie was born in Blantyre, Malawi, and she now lives and works in Johannesburg. She made her mark with a debut solo exhibition in Johannesburg in 2004, the same year she won the Gerard Sekoto Award, and has since consistently produced striking artworks and strengthened her unmistakeable universe.
Billie’s works have been exhibited at galleries in Johannesburg, Dakar, Marrakech, Paris and New York, among many other cities. She has been featured in shows at institutions including Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden in Marrakech and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC. Her portraits often draw on her own experiences and explore notions of gender performance, domestic labour and racial prejudice. (L’Atelier 30 Years of Introspection)

Lawrence Lemaoana - 2005
Lawrence lived in the small mining town of Welkom before returning to Johannesburg to continue his studies. He went on to study for a Bachelor of Fine Art at the University of Johannesburg, where he received his Bachelor of Technology in Fine Arts. Lawrence is currently reading for a master’s degree at Unisa’s Department of Art and Music, where he is also a junior lecturer of visual art.
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His body of work has as its departure point a fascination with the role of the mass media in present-day South Africa. At the roots of Lawrence’s work, the relationship between the people and the media is problematised as a relationship of representation and control, questioning who gets to control modes of representation and who gets to represent those in control.
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The power of the media to act as didactic tool or propagandistic weapon and to reveal and shape the psyche or group consciousness of the people are taken up in Lemaoana’s work with his trademark cynical satire.

Nomusa Makhuba - 2007
Award-winning artist and hardcore academic Nomusa manages to strike a delicate balance between creativity and intellectualism. She sees the different aspects of what she does as going hand in hand, stating, “The arts are not only forms of expression but are also important modes of reflection that critique intricate sociopolitical environments and the powers that influence people’s everyday lives.”
Associate professor of art history and visual culture, Nomusa is also a successful artist who has exhibited in nine countries. Identity is a strong theme in her work and she explores it in her acclaimed Self-portrait Project series by projecting images of herself onto historically sensitive material.
Since winning the Gerard Sekoto Award, she has also won the Prix du Studio National des Arts Contemporain, Le Fresnoy, in 2014. She co-edited a special issue of Third Text, titled The Art of Change (2013), and later co-curated with Nkule Mabaso the international exhibition Fantastic in 2015 and the stronger we become at the 58th Venice Biennale in Italy in 2019.
(L’Atelier 30 Years of Introspection )

Nina Barnet – 2007
Nina Barnet was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and lives in Chicago, USA. In 2012, she completed her master’s degree in fine arts at the University of Illinois in Chicago after having obtained her bachelor’s degree in fine arts with distinction at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
In 2012, an exhibition titled The Dragon is the Frame was held at Gallery 400 in Chicago. In the same year she exhibited I Accidently Turned off the Sun at the 2012 UIC Art MFA Thesis Exhibition, also at Gallery 400. (30 Year L’Atelier Book of Introspection)

Retha Fergurson – 2008
Retha is a Cape Town-based photographer practising through the medium of documentary photography since 2009. Her documentary work has been exhibited in South Africa, Lesotho, Georgia, France and the USA. She is currently pursuing her PhD in history at the Centre for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape under the guidance of African history, gender studies, and visuality scholar Patricia Hayes.

Nyaniso Lindi – 2009
Nyaniso is a visual artist and independent curator currently living in Makhanda. He is a Gerard Sekoto Award-winning artist (2009) and studied towards a fine-art degree at Rhodes University.
Nyaniso is a master printmaker who uses his technique across print mediums but confesses that relief printing – specifically colour reduction – is close to his heart. His work has been exhibited in many spaces, including the National Arts Festival, Paris, the MoMa Art Gallery in New York and various art spaces in Johannesburg. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions and exchanges across South Africa and in Northern America. Some of those include Cross-cultural Identities and Art for Humanity’s Break the Silence billboard campaign. He is also the co-founder of the Gazini Community Outreach Project, which was established in the early 2000s in Makhanda, home of the National Arts Festival.
Nyaniso currently teaches art in community spaces and is the cofounder of The Open Space in Makhanda, a concept pop-up art gallery and empty stage for creatives across all art disciplines. He also hosts Creative Kids Master Art Classes for children he “hangs out” with, whom he lets beat him at chess and whom he describes as having much more talent than he has.
Nyaniso is currently working towards two new bodies of work, respectively called Battered & Broozed and Waya-Waya. The latter was shortlisted for the National Arts Festival 2022 Curated/Main Programme.

Bongumenzi Ngobese – 2010
Bongumenzi was born in 1987 in Nkandla, KwaZulu-Natal. He is a Durban-based artist who completed his Bachelor of Technology in Fine Arts at the Durban University of Technology.
At the time of Absa L’Atelier’s 30th year Introspection, he was studying towards his master’s degree in fine arts at the same university. His work is centred around the investigation of his Zulu cultural identity. He explores and questions political issues surrounding this personal identity and his surroundings. (30 Year L’Atelier Book of Introspection)

Isabel Mertz – 2011
Isabel is a visual artist and object maker. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Visual Art at Nelson Mandela University. She holds a master’s degree in visual arts (cum laude) from the University of Stellenbosch and a bachelor’s degree in arts from the University of Pretoria.
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In 2011, Isabel received the Gerard Sekoto Award and a merit prize at the annual Absa L’Atelier Art competition. She has participated in numerous group shows both in South Africa and internationally. Her visual research focuses on investigating the complexities associated with the notion of home and the temporal qualities of place. By examining various human and non-human architectures, inherited objects and archival maps, her work aims to poetically challenge and subvert patriarchal hierarchies.

Bambo Sibiya – 2012
Bambo was born in KwaThema, Springs, near Johannesburg. He trained and worked at the Artist Proof Studio Gallery, where he has also worked on large-scale linocuts for several leading artists, including William Kentridge, Diane Victor, Norman Catherine and Colbert Mashile. Rich stylistic detail and textures mark Bambo’s linocuts, drypoint and lithographic works, which provide insight into masculine identity and community on the streets of Johannesburg.
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He has performed extremely well in South African art competitions in recent years. In 2012, he was a finalist in the Absa L’Atelier Top 10 Awards and the winner of the prestigious Gerard Sekoto Award, which facilitated his completion of two residencies in 2013: at Atelier le Grand Village (Angoulême, France) and at Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris, France). Bambo’s works are held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (the national collection of prints), among other places. (L’Atelier 30 Years of Introspection ).

Mongezi Ncaphayi – 2013
Mongezi was born in 1983 in Benoni in Eastern Gauteng, where he currently lives and works. Following his graduation with a Diploma in Art and Design from the Ekurhuleni East College in 2005, he completed a professional printmaking course at Artist Proof Studio in 2008. In 2012, Mongezi obtained a Certificate in Advanced Studies from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MA, and went on to receive multiple awards and grants both locally and internationally. In 2013, he was the recipient of the prestigious Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, earning him a three-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France.
His work is included in many important collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; Museum of Fine Arts and School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, NH; Thami Mnyele Foundation, Amsterdam; Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris; The Ampersand Foundation, London; Cuciano Benetton Foundation, Treviso; Mastercard Collection and Absa Art Gallery, Johannesburg; The Royal Portfolio Collection, Cape Town; The Weise Collection, Stellenbosch; and David Krut Projects, Cape Town, Johannesburg and New York City. (L’Atelier 30 Years of Introspection )

Mbavhalelo Nekhavhambe – 2014
Mbavhalelo was born in 1981. He holds a BTech (Fine Arts) and has participated in several exhibitions, including the Absa L’Atelier exhibition in 2012 and 2013. He was a top 10 finalist in 2012 before winning the Gerard Sekoto Award in the same competition two years later. Through his art he explores the link between creativity and humanity. Mbavhalelo uses art as metaphorically as the voice of a concerned community leader disgruntled by the people’s constant destruction of public infrastructure in Vuwani during times of protest. Furthermore, he questions democracy, wondering if we are really free or just enslaved by what elders call “a crazy demon”.

Natalie Moore – 2015
Born in 1990, Natalie is a photographer and mixed-media artist. She won the Gerard Sekoto Award in the 2015 Absa L’Atelier art competition for her photographic triptych Once Upon a Time Jozi. She is also a designer with a particular leaning towards the field of architecture and she completed a Bachelor of Arts (Architecture) at the University of the Witwatersrand.
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Her photographic triptych Once Upon a Time Jozi is both a light-hearted and a didactic exploration of the universal fairytale in the African context. It looks at the archetypal mould of the world stage by forcing Africa into that mould. The incongruence of the realism of the photographic medium and the whimsy of the fairytale also comes into play, spotlighting the starkness of real life.
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As part of her prize, Natalie won a three-month artistic residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France, allowing her to explore a new artistic scene and create an exhibition that toured within the French cultural network in Southern Africa in 2018.
(L’Atelier 30 Years of Introspection ).

Matete Motubatse – 2016
Matete won the Absa L’Atelier’s Gerard Sekoto Award in 2016. He was born in South Africa.
The character in his film takes the form of a body that tries to blow a physical obstacle – a plastic bag – off its head by using its breath.
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Matete speaks about breath in terms of its significance and meaning in Sepedi, in which it is translated as moya. This Sepedi word not only means breath, but also air, spirit or soul. Thus, the black plastic bag represents the material form of a nonphysical form that prevents the body (or someone) from breathing. Using breath as the very object that suffocates is equivalent to entering a spiritual, soulful battle, as air/breath/spirit/soul is nonphysical. The film symbolises ntwa ya moya, that is, an intense celestial battle of nonphysical forces. (L’Atelier 30 Years of Introspection ).

Banele Khoza – 2017
Banele was born in 1994 in Hlatikulu, eSwatini, and currently lives and works in Pretoria, Johannesburg and Durban. He obtained a Bachelor of Technology in Fine Arts from Tshwane University of Technology in 2015.
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Banele is a South Africa-based visual artist. In 2017, he won the prestigious Gerard Sekoto Award and with it a three-month residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France. He also completed a residency at Ampersand, New York City, in 2022.
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His recent solo exhibitions include What’s Left Unsaid (2024, Goodman Gallery, South Africa), How Are You Doing? (2023, BKhz, South Africa), From South Africa (Dear Diary) (2022, Kunsthaus Göttingen, Germany) and Be-pression (2022, Nil Gallery, France), among others. In 2019, his solo exhibition Seeking Love toured institutions across South Africa.
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In 2018, Banele opened the doors of BKhz in Braamfontein Johannesburg. The gallery currently operates from the iconic Keyes Art Mile in Rosebank, in the same city. For his work and contributions to the South African creative economy, Banele was honoured as one of the Mail & Guardian 200 Young South Africans in 2019.

Philiswa Lila - 2018
Philiswa Lila born in 1988, is a South African visual artist, curator, and scholar focused on themes of authorship, identity, and memory. Working across painting, installation, and performance art, she incorporates materials like animal skin, beading, and wood. Lila holds a Master's in Art History from Rhodes University, an Honours in Curatorship from UCT, and a B.Tech in Fine Arts from TUT. She won the 2018 Absa L'Atelier and Gerard Sekoto Award, presenting the resulting works in her solo exhibition Skin, Bone, Fire: The First Album in 2020.
Lila’s residencies include the Bag Factory (2013) and Greatmore Studios (2014). She also participated in the GendV Project, creating works for Stories of our Soil (2021). Her art is in collections at the University of Pretoria, UCT, and Absa Bank. Lila has exhibited widely, including at the Joburg Art Fair and Pretoria Art Museum. She regularly presents at conferences and recently published an essay on family memories with the Creative Knowledge Resources forum. Lila is represented by The Melrose Gallery, where she was selected as an “artist to watch” by Dr. Esther Mahlangu for the 2019 SEED auction.

Phoka Nyokong – 2019
Phoka is an artist, curator, writer and African cultural scholar. His practice is transdisciplinary. He works across performance, sound/video and installation art, and photography, storytelling, curating, writing, drawing and a current extensive focus on painting.
Most of Phoka’s previous exhibitions have been with public institutions, and a few with private institutions. His work has been exhibited at the Aardklop Arts Festival (2013), the Pretoria Art Museum, the Absa L’Atelier exhibition at the Absa Art Gallery in Johannesburg (2019), the Ernest Mancoba Dialogue at the A4 Arts Foundation in Cape Town (2020) and, most recently, the group show Black Luminosity at Smac Gallery in Stellenbosch. The year 2020 saw his first institutional solo exhibition, titled Dinoolwane, Matlotlo le Baloi at the North West University Art Gallery in Potchefstroom.
Phoka holds an honours degree in curatorship from the Centre for Curating the Archive (CCA), and currently lives and works in Pretoria and Klerksdorp.
In 2019, he was the recipient of the Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award and the Mellon Scholarship. Most recently, he was awarded the Live Art Fellowship from the Institute for Creative Arts at the University of Cape Town.

Abongile Sidzumo – 2021
Abongile was born in 1996 in Cape Town, where he currently lives and works. He completed his degree in fine arts at the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2019.
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Abongile received the Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize in 2020, which afforded him a solo exhibition titled Dancing in the Dust at Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg. In the same year, he was the runner-up for the Cassirer Welz Award, hosted by Strauss & Co Auctioneers.
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Abongile has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including The Oasis at Hallmark House (2021), A Prelude at BKhz Gallery and Slip Stream at Gallery-De-Move-On (2022). In 2021, he received the Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, which won him a three-month residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France.
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In 2023, Abongile had his second solo show at the Absa Art Gallery in Johannesburg. The show also travelled to Gqeberha, Bloemfontein and Pretoria. In 2023, he was the artist in residence at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK).

Malebogo Molokoane – 2022
Malebogo was born on 22 September 1990 in Rustenburg, North West. After being educated in top-tier environments, she enrolled at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT), where she later obtained her Postgraduate Diploma in Fine and Applied Art. She is employed as a part-time lecturer in the TUT Glass Studio.
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In 2022 Malebogo was awarded the Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award as the South African artist who showed the most promise for continual growth in her work. She participated in the 2021 Blow Your Sculpture African glass art exhibition, was a 2021 featured artist for Mathews and Associates Architects Saadjies, was listed in the Sasol New Signature top 100 and participated in the online exhibition Imitation of Life for Lizamore & Associates. In 2022, she participated in a glass group exhibition, Next Generation, supported by Southern African Glass in celebration of International Glass Year. In 2023, she participated in Session 5: The Mental Class, at the Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle, USA, and she participated in SculptX 2023, the sixth edition of the largest annual sculpture fair in South Africa.
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In 2024, Malebogo’s first solo exhibition was held at the Absa Art Gallery, Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (KKNK) and Nelson Mandela University’s Bird Street Gallery. She was nominated for the best presentation in visual art at the 2024 Kannas KKNK awards. Recently, she contributed a mural for Absa’s “Your story matters” campaign.

Bulumko Mbete – 2023
Bulumko, born in 1995, is a creative practitioner with a multicultural heritage. Her work is based on the concept liminal spaces. She completed her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She undertakes research in different forms of craft and design making – methods that, in Southern Africa, are predominantly practised by women. Bulumko is interested in materiality. By using textile, beading, natural dyeing and weaving, she creates a framework to communicate generational traditions and gestures of love.
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Bulumko’s interests expand into ways of engaging with the archival material and using it for creative storytelling. In this pursuit, she uses photographs, textiles and clothes. She explores the geographic connections and synchronicities within her family in relation to South African history, and their effect on migration, labour, farming and love. She is the 2023 recipient of the Cassirer Welz Award and residency at the Bag Factory. Bulumko will be studying towards her Master of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, USA.