My core research interest is social justice in relation to the arts of Africa, and I’m exploring ways to bring more intimacy, creativity, spirituality and audacity to scholarly work.
I was born in Uasin Gishu, Kenya, and grew up in Cape Town, South Africa. I also lived in Canada, the USA and Zambia during my postgraduate studies and PhD research. I received my PhD in African art history from Harvard University in 2008.
Currently, I am based in Makhanda, South Africa where I work at Rhodes University as the National Research Foundation (NRF) SARChI Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa and a professor in Art History & Visual Culture. I founded Arts Lounge Africa (2011) and the RAW Spot Gallery (2018), which are linked to my NRF SARChI Chair programme at Rhodes University.
My research focuses on the arts of Africa and global souths. For my PhD I studied cultural festivals in Zambia, questioning the relationship between tradition and cosmopolitanism in socio-political and socio-cultural performance. I later developed the ideas of “cosmolocal orientation” and “strategic southernness”, stressing the complexity of our relationships with place and alternative geopolitical framings. I position place as a living character – an audacious one at that. Far from being static, all places, including villages and remote islands, are entangled with movement, and I have written about migration, xenophobia, “contra-flow diasporas” and oceanic convergences in relation to art and performance.
Access to and ownership of land are contentious issues world-wide, and recently I have become particularly interested in the relationship between our bodies, land and ancestral spirits. I consider ways that artists and performers co-create with land and spirits through walking practices, spiritual practices, and what I refer to as “site-situational art”. This research also grapples with burial, particularly in contexts of migration, and my core case studies have been in South Africa, Zambia and, more recently, St. Helena Island in the South Atlantic.
For over a decade I have conducted research on artists’ responses to Chinese presence on the African continent. In 2022 I co-edited the book, Visualising China in Southern Africa: Biography, Circulation, Transgression, which has been referred to as a “pathbreaking publication” (Jamie Monson) that is “breathtaking in its ambition and scope” (Yoon Jung Park). I am currently working on another book manuscript: Intimacy, Solidarity, Resistance: Creative Expression at the Nexus of Africa and China.
I recently brought together the work from my research programmes since 2011, and have created the book Audacious Art Histories: Grounding the Arts of Africa. Co-edited with Rachel Baasch and Stephen Fọlárànmí, the book includes essays by colleagues, collaborators and students. Central to the book is my idea of “reaching sideways”, which refers to collaborative methodologies as well as Africa-Africa and south-south engagements that undermine the dominance of unequal north-south encounters.
Besides being a researcher, educator and author, I enjoy being a creative and have worked as an independent curator. Photography is integral to my research process, and I recently turned to filmmaking in order to communicate my research in more creative and accessible ways.
Awards & Grants
In 2018, I was awarded a B Rating by the South African National Research Foundation (NRF), which in NRF terms refers to “Researchers who enjoy considerable international recognition by their peers for the high quality and impact of their recent research outputs”.
I am also an elected member of the Academy of Science South Africa (ASSAF), the official academy for “distinguished scientists” that “represents the country in the international community of science academies”.
In recent years I have received major multi-year research grants from the Andrew Mellon Foundation and the South African National Research Foundation (NRF), which included grant holder linked bursaries for postdoctoral fellows and postgraduate students.
I ran the Visual and Performing Arts of Africa research programme (2011-2016) and Publishing and Research of the South: Positioning Africa (PROSPA) (2016 to 2020). As part of PROSPA, I established the Art POWA Network, as well as a series of Publishing Workshops that were collaborations with scholars in South Africa, Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria.
In 2016, I was awarded a Tier 2 NRF SARChI Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa, which was renewed and upgraded to Tier 1 in 2021.
Currently I am a core researcher in the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence — a Rhodes collaboration with the University of Lagos (Nigeria), Moi University (Kenya), Joseph Ki-Zerbo University (Burkina Faso), and Bayreuth University (Germany). This cluster is funded by the German Research Foundation.
Earlier in my career I received an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Postdoctoral Fellow as part of the Humanities in Africa programme in 2010, and won the Rhodes University Vice Chancellor’s research award in 2009.
I received a teaching award as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University (2022), and was awarded international research funds from Harvard University; the Whiting Foundation; the Norton Foundation; the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in the USA; the Jennifer Oppenheimer Foundation; the College Art Association; the Getty Foundation; the Confucius Institute; the Canada Council of the Arts; and the National Gallery of Canada.
In South Africa, I have been awarded research, exhibition and filmmaking funds from the National Research Foundation (NRF); the National Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS); the National Arts Council (NAC); the National Arts Festival (NAF); the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund (NLDTF); the Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture (ECPAC); and Rhodes University.
I have had the great pleasure of being invited to numerous academic institutions across the world to share my work, including institutions in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Senegal, Nigeria, China, Portugal, Switzerland, the UK, the USA and Canada. I have also presented my work in Ghana, Jamaica, Poland, Australia, New Zealand and France. My work has been translated into Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish and French.
I was included in the list of Top 30 Researchers at Rhodes University in the 2023, 2020, 2016 and 2013 Research Reports.
In 2012, MIT Press selected my article on the Soweto Uprising and photography as “one of the 50 most influential MIT Press articles”. During the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, three of my articles were selected by MIT Press for a “special compilation on anti-racism and social justice”. Articles include: “Situating Africa: An Alter-geopolitics of Knowledge, or Chapungu Rises” (solo authored); “Condition Report 3: Art History in Africa: Debating Localization, Legitimization and New Solidarities” (lead author of collaboration); and “Zimbabwe Mobilizes: ICAC's Shift from Coup de Grăce to Cultural Coup” (lead author of collaboration).