Artist's Biography
Tatenda Magaisa is an artist, researcher and cultural producer from South Africa. Her work explores themes pertaining to global cultural interaction, black women in popular culture, as artists and/or practitioners in Africa and the foregone conclusion of surplus labour under a culturally dominated society. Drawing strongly on prevalent visual material and assumed norms referenced from popular culture and social media, her research is rooted in an exploration of art practiced under irreconcilable conditions.
Artists on the margin are directly affected by tenuous material conditions from which they make from, and this includes their genders, geography, race, sexuality etc., there is an expectation that they not only speak about these conditions, but more importantly make work about them and offer reparative solutions. She considers that to be excess emotional and mental labour that goes unpaid and unrewarded and can be a way that shoehorns into reductive and limited identity work.
Tatenda Magaisa is the co-founder of Rera Letsema, a collaborative research platform. Exhibitions and projects include ‘Minding Our Business’ (2018/2019) a podcast project by Rera Letsema in collaboration with the Visual Arts Network of South Africa, 'Five Bhobh – Painting at the End of an Era' (2018/2019) at Zeitz MOCAA and the co-curation of ‘Overtime: representations, values and imagined futures of ‘classical African Art’ (2017) at the Wits Art Museum.
This award is funded by National Arts Council and proceeds from the sale of the David Koloane Exhibition Publication: A Resilient Visionary which partially funded this award. .
Artists on the margin are directly affected by tenuous material conditions from which they make from, and this includes their genders, geography, race, sexuality etc., there is an expectation that they not only speak about these conditions, but more importantly make work about them and offer reparative solutions. She considers that to be excess emotional and mental labour that goes unpaid and unrewarded and can be a way that shoehorns into reductive and limited identity work.
Tatenda Magaisa is the co-founder of Rera Letsema, a collaborative research platform. Exhibitions and projects include ‘Minding Our Business’ (2018/2019) a podcast project by Rera Letsema in collaboration with the Visual Arts Network of South Africa, 'Five Bhobh – Painting at the End of an Era' (2018/2019) at Zeitz MOCAA and the co-curation of ‘Overtime: representations, values and imagined futures of ‘classical African Art’ (2017) at the Wits Art Museum.
This award is funded by National Arts Council and proceeds from the sale of the David Koloane Exhibition Publication: A Resilient Visionary which partially funded this award. .
