James Webb is a conceptual artist, working with site-specific interventions and installations. His practice often involves sound, found objects, and text, invoking references to literature, cinema, and the minimalist traditions. By shifting objects, techniques, and forms beyond their original contexts and introducing them to different environments, Webb creates new spaces of tension. These spaces bind Webb’s academic background in religion, theatre, and advertising, offering poetic inquiries into the economies of belief and dynamics of communication in our contemporary world.

Webb has had solo exhibitions at, amongst others, the Art Institute of Chicago, USA (2018); SPACES, Cleveland, USA (2018); Norrtälje Konsthall, Norrtälje, Sweden (2018); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, United Kingdom (2016); Hordaland Kunstsenter, Bergen, Norway (2015); Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa (2012); and mac, Birmingham, United Kingdom (2010). Major group exhibitions include the 13th Biennial of Dakar (2018), 4th Prospect Triennial of New Orleans (2017), Documenta 14 (2017), 13th Biennial of Sharjah (2017), 12th Bienal de la Habana (2015), 55th Biennale di Venezia (2013), 3rd Marrakech Biennale (2009), Melbourne International Arts Festival (2009), and the 8th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2007). Webb’s work has been the subject of the two monographs, “. . .” (blank projects, 2020), and “Xenagogue” (Hordaland Kunstsenter, 2015).

Vulindlela Nyoni was born in Chilimanzi, Zimbabwe in 1976 and attained a Bachelor of Arts in the Fine Arts from the then University of Natal in 1998 and a Masters in Fine Arts from the now University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Nyoni is an Associate Professor and Head of the Visual Arts Department at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha/Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Prior to this he served as Senior lecturer in Printmaking at the Department of Visual Art at the University of Stellenbosch after his position of Director at the Centre for Visual Art, UKZN.

Apart from being a practicing artist, Nyoni also lectures in Printmaking and Drawing. His main interests lie in race, gender, the visual politics of representation and self-representation as a form of strategic translocal subjectivity.

Nyoni has served as a national and regional selector for the Sanlam Portrait Award, Absa Atelier and Sasol New Signatures competition as well as serving on a variety of advisory boards. He has shown widely on a national and international level and continues to expand his international profile as artist, educator and curator.  He continues to make his own work at any opportunity he has.

David Thatanelo April is a director, teacher, choreographer, and lobbyist in the realm of South African dance and performance. With over two decades of experience in the Creative and Cultural industries he has filled a diversity of roles within the performing arts sphere; performer, project manager, fundraiser, dance adjudicator, motivational speaker and reviewer.

He imparts his long standing knowledge of the performing arts as a dedicated mentor and advisor to arts practitioners as well as internationally acclaimed choreographers. April’s impeccable attention to detail extends to providing individualised, hands-on consulting services for arts organisations within the public and corporate sectors as well as education institutions.

2003 saw him being the first recipient of the prestigious Tunkie Memorial Award for “Outstanding Dedication and Leadership in Dance”. Recently, he received an award for “Management and Leadership in Cultural Economy” from the Wits School of Arts in Partnership with Business Arts South Africa (BASA).

Currently, April is employed at the University of Pretoria (School of the Arts) involved in Production Logistics alongside lecturing Arts Administration & Management as well as Movement Studies.

Caroline Calburn initiated the Theatre Arts Admin Collective in Cape Town in 2009 after a long history in theatre in which she has been a performer, theatre director, educator and facilitator.  She has worked in both universities and communities and through her work has been committed to using theatre to forge a change in South African society.  She lectured at the Drama Department at the University of Cape Town, set up Iindiza the Mielie Stalks Theatre Co which created original work and performed both locally and internationally, and was part of a team of arts facilitators from both South Africa and Britain who pioneered Project Phakama in 1996, an international arts exchange education programme which created site-specific theatre with young people from diverse communities at a local, national and international level.  Theatre Arts, as it is now known, its ethos and its programmes, is a culmination of this experience.  She has a particular interest in creating opportunities for emerging theatre directors and creating a space for experimental work to flourish.

Katarina Hedrén is a freelance film curator and film critic based in Johannesburg.  She is the former chairperson of CinemAfrica film festival in Sweden, former director of the European Film Festival in South Africa, co-programmer for the First Wednesday Film Club in Johannesburg and for Film Africa Film Festival in London. She is also a member of the Pan African Film Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO) selection committee. As a writer and critic her work appears on platforms including Radio 702 South Africa, Africa is a Country, FLM Magazine, BBC Culture as well as the anthology  Gaze Regimes – Films and Feminisms in Africa (Mistry & Schuhmann, Wits University Press, 2015).