Judges

Simon Njami

Independent Curator, Lecturer, Art Critic and Novelist

Simon Njami is a Paris-based independent curator, lecturer, art critic and novelist. Njami was the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Revue Noire, a journal of contemporary African and extra-occidental art. He served as artistic director of the first Johannesburg art fair in 2008, the Bamako photography biennale for ten years, and the Dak’Art Biennale (2016/2018). He co-curated the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. Member and spokesperson of the Finding Committee of Documenta 16. Njami has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary art and photography, including Africa Remix (2004/2007) and the first African Art Fair, held in Johannesburg in 2008. In 1998, he created the Pan African master classes in photography, with the Goethe Institute and directed it for over 12 years. He published and edited numerous books among which two biographies, James Baldwin andLeopold Sédar Senghor, and four novels. His latest publication is Stories Histories, the story of Revue noire (2021). Njami studied literature, law, and philosophy at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

Same Mdluli

Artist, Art Historian, Curator and Writer

Same Mdluli is an artist, art historian and curator, and writer living in Johannesburg. She holds a PhD in Art History, MA in Arts and Culture Management from Wits University and a B-Tech degree in Fine Arts (cum laude) from the University of Johannesburg. Professionally she has worked as an assistant and administrator for artists and both private and public cultural institutions such as Goodman Gallery (both Cape Town and Johannesburg) and Wits Art Museum. She has also taught arts at various school levels ranging from primary school to tertiary education. She has participated in various art exhibitions in here capacity as curator or artist and presented papers at various conferences both locally and internationally in addition to awards such as the Arts and Culture Trust Arts Writing Mentorship and Post Graduate Merit Awards. She has also participated in a number of international residencies including as a Junior Research Scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and as guest researcher at the Institut National d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris for the ‘Culture Profession’ programme under Art and Globalisation. Her research interests are in contemporary African art, black expressive modes and aesthetics as well as the conversations between jazz and visual art. Before she was being appointed curator and manager at the Standard Bank Gallery, she was a sessional lecturer at Wits University in the Art History.

Thato Mogotsi

Curator of Contemporary Art at Zeitz MOCAA

Thato Mogotsi (b. 1984, Johannesburg) has curated and collaborated on several artist-led and research informed projects and exhibitions in various South African art institutions including the Johannesburg Art Gallery; the Market Photo Workshop; the Apartheid Museum; Constitution Hill; Wits School of Art; and the Wits Art Museum. In 2019, Mogotsi was a curatorial fellow of the Thami Mnyele Foundation’s Residency Award in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She has participated in curatorial research excursions and residencies in Belfast, Northern Ireland (invited by the British Council for the 2013 Turner Prize announcement); Switzerland (with Pro-Helvetia for the 2016 Plat(t)form Photography Festival at Fotomuseum Winterthur); the Netherlands (with the Mondriaan Fond in 2017 and 2019); and Vienna (with Phileas: The Austrian Office for Contemporary Art in 2024). In 2022, Mogotsi joined Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) as Assistant Curator where she recently co-curated GILT, a seminal retrospective on the decades-long practice of Nigerian-born, British artist, Mary Evans as well as a survey exhibition on the critical practice of French photographer Mame-Diarra Niang, titled Self as a Forgotten Monument; both presented in 2023. Her ongoing focus as a museum worker is informed by artist-centred exchange within models of institution-building that further complicate notions of curatorial responsibility and authorship.

Raphael Chikukwa

Executive Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe

Born in Zimbabwe, Chikukwa holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts and Culture Management from the University of the Witwatersrand Business School

and an MA in Curating Contemporary Design from

Kingston University, which he attained as a Chevening Scholar. Chikukwa is a Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)/ International Curatorial Institute Centre for Curatorial Leadership (CCL) 2021 Fellow.

Chikukwa joined the National Gallery of Zimbabwe

in 2010 as its Chief Curator and is now the

Executive Director and Chief Curator of the National

Gallery of Zimbabwe. Before joining the National

Gallery of Zimbabwe, Chikukwa worked for over ten

years as an independent curator. Raphael

Chikukwa is the founding Curator of the Pavilion of

Zimbabwe at the Venice Biennale, starting from the

54th, up to the 58th Edition. He is committed to a

multitude of Committees, among them, High Line

Plinth in New York 2020, DAAD (German Academic

Exchange Service), the Delfina Foundation London

UK, the Future Generation Art Prize, and served as

juror for the Dakar Biennale in 2018.

Tim Marlow

Chief Executive and Director, Design Museum, UK

Tim Marlow is Chief Executive and Director of the Design Museum in London.

Formerly Artistic Director of the Royal Academy of Arts and Director of Exhibitions at White Cube, Marlow has been involved in the contemporary art world for the past thirty years as a curator, writer and broadcaster. He has worked with many of the most important and influential artists of our time to deliver wide-ranging and popular programmes and brings a commitment to diverse and engaging exhibitions to his new role showcasing the transformational capability of design.

Marlow sits on the Board of Trustees for the Imperial War Museum, the Design Age Institute and Cultureshock Media. Marlow was awarded an OBE in 2019.

2024 Judges

Ashraf Jamal

Writer-Researcher, ArtBankSA and University of Johannesburg

Ashraf Jamal is the Writer-researcher for ArtBankSA, and a research associate in visual art and design at the University of Johannesburg. He has taught at universities locally and abroad the spheres of cultural studies, art history, performance, anthropology, and comparative literature. Jamal is the co-author of Art in South Africa: The Future Present and co-editor of Indian Ocean Studies: Social, Cultural, and Political Perspectives. He is the author of Love themes for the wilderness, The Shades, A million years ago in the nineties, Predicaments of culture in South Africa, IN the World: Essays on Contemporary South African Art, Strange Cargo: Essays on Art, and Looking into the mad eye of history without blinking. Cataract: Essays on Abstraction is forthcoming.

Heba El-Kayal

Curatorial Consultant

Heba El Kayal is a curator, writer and researcher from Cairo, Egypt. Heba gained a bachelor’s degree in English and comparative literature from the American University in Cairo, and a master’s degree in modern art history and curatorial studies from Columbia University in New York City. She is in the process of submitting a dissertation for an LLM Legal Studies and Legal Practice degree in England, examining a topic related to the intersection of art and law. She has worked in various art-related capacities in Dubai, Beirut, New York, and London, amongst other cities, specializing in modern and contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa. Heba has, over the course of her career, regularly consulted for auction houses and private collectors, working closely with both emerging and established artists from the region.

Marie-Ann Yemsi

Independent Exhibition Curator and Contemporary Art Consultant

Marie-Ann Yemsi is an independent curator and contemporary art consultant based in Paris. A graduate in political science, she has developed a recognised expertise in cultural production and art consultancy, with a particular focus on contemporary artists from Africa, its diasporas and the Caribbean. Artistic Director of the 11th edition of the Bamako Encounters - African Biennial of Photography in 2017, she has curated numerous international exhibitions for public and private institutions in France and abroad. Marie-Ann Yemsi is a member of the Board of Directors of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and of the acquisition commission of the Cnap, Centre National des Arts Plastiques, a public institution under the French Ministry of Culture dedicated to expand and manage France’s national contemporary art collection.

Ngaire Blankenberg

Founder & Director, Institute for Creative Repair

Ngaire Blankenberg is the founder and director of the Institute for Creative Repair- a new initiative that is working to repair individuals, communities, institutions and cities, through arts, culture and heritage. Previously, she was the Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (NMAFA) from 2021-2023.

Under her leadership, Ngaire began transforming NMAFA into a 21st Century Global African Art Museum with a vision to contribute to more regenerative art ecosystems, underpinned by African philosophies. She was instrumental in issues of restitution; in her first year as director, she led the Smithsonian’s efforts to return the ‘Benin Bronzes’ in its collections back to Nigeria and was co-lead in the pan-Smithsonian Collections Stewardship Strategic Initiative.

Sean O'Toole

Writer, Editor and Curator

Sean O’Toole is writer, editor and curator based in Cape Town. His books include the biography Irma Stern: African in Europe – European in Africa (2021) and short story collection The Marquis of Mooikloof and Other Stories (2006). He has edited three volumes of essays, including African Futures (2016) and The Journey (2020). His essays have appeared in monographs by, among others, Michael Armitage, David Goldblatt, Gareth Nyandoro, Brett Seiler, Penny Siopis and James Webb. He is a past editor of Art South Africa (now Art Africa) and co-founded the urban-affairs magazine Cityscapes. A working journalist principally focussed on art, photography and architecture, he has published well over 1000 news articles, reviews, features and commentary in print and online. His recent curatorial projects include Congress (2021) at Norval Foundation and Photo book! Photo-book! Photobook! (2022) at A4 Arts Foundation. He has adjudicated numerous awards, including the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Daimler Award for South African Photography and Frieze Writer’s Prize. He is the founder of independent publisher Extemporary Press.

2022 & 2023 Judges

David Elliot

Art historian, writer and curator.

Since 2010, Elliot has been the Artistic Director of biennales of contemporary art in Sydney, Kiev, Moscow and Belgrade and is currently working freelance as a writer and Curator.

Janine Gaëlle Diedji

Cultural Practitioner

Janine is a multilocal exhibitions maker and producer, cultural activist and a cultural gardener living between Florence, Paris and Marrakech.

Tim Marlow

Chief Executive and Director,Design Museum, London

Marie-Anne Yemsi

Independent exhibition curator and contemporary art consultant

Born in Germany to German and Cameroonian parents, Yemsi is a political science graduate who lives and works in Paris. Through Agent Créatif(s), her own agency, Yemsi has developed a renowned expertise in cultural production and art consulting.

Bonolo Kavula

Artist and winner of the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize 2021- 2022.

Kavula is the winner of the inaugural Norval Sovereign African Art Prize in 2022. She obtained a BA(FA) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in 2014, majoring in Printmaking.

Past Judge: Khanya Mashabela, curator at A4 Foundation, Cape Town, South Africa