Excited to announce our esteemed jury for the 2024 Banana Club Artist Fund! Our discerning panel consists of prominent young professionals killing it in the art scene.
Lerato Motshwarakgole – Curator, Creative Director & Founder, Ora Loapi Pty Ltd
As a seasoned creative arts economist and strategist, Lerato brings invaluable expertise to our panel. With a knack for fostering public-private partnerships, she adds a vital dimension to our jury, ensuring a holistic evaluation of artistic merit and impact.
Wyssolela Moreira – Multidisciplinary Artist, and Art Director
Hailing from Luanda and spanning her creative endeavors between Toronto and Angola, Wyssolela’s multidisciplinary approach challenges neo-colonial norms, focusing on the intersection of art and spirituality. Her work boldly deconstructs colonial legacies, shedding light on marginalized experiences.
Over the course of the last year, Wyssolela exhibited her second solo exhibition “Kinenga Mu Kala” (The Balance of Being), Jahmek Contemporary Art Gallery, Luanda, Angola, 2023, a multidisciplinary project with works that aim to redefine the concepts of spirituality, the integral connection with our internal existence and the exploration of external spaces; And was one of the 2023 artists in residence at LAPA, Brixton, Johannesburg, South Africa working in collaboration with fellow Angolan artist Anita Sambanje on “Portable Paradise” exploring the notion of rituals of passage, which led them to thinking about life cycles and transitions, and the role of the Dikenga Cosmogram to map the journey of an individual’s life.
Khanyi Mawhayi – Artist & Curator
A dynamic artist and curator from Cape Town, South Africa, Khanyi’s work delves deep into themes of decoloniality and world-building. With a keen eye for abstraction and a mission to reimagine societal structures, she brings a unique perspective to the the creative arts.
Through her artistic and curatorial practice, Mawhayi looks for ways in which society can reimagine normalized structures and systems by acknowledging individual and shared desires and encouraging fabulation and imagination. She makes drawings, paintings, non-narrative videos, and tapestries and considers materiality and form, especially colour, not only on an aesthetic level but also on a conceptual basis. Drawing from art history, popular culture, and personal experience, she sees her wider practice as a reflection on her mission to comfortably exist within multiplicities.
Mawhayi holds a BFA from Wits University (‘20) and has held three solo exhibitions in Cape Town, most recently Black and White Paradise at Vela Projects. Her work has been shown in the Kampala Biennale (‘20), the Zozimo Bulbul Black Film Festival (‘22) and What We Know at Keys Art Mile (‘22). She is currently a curatorial assistant at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.
Artwork by SUPER FEAT
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