Join us live over Zoom for an afternoon of thoughtful exchange and collaborative discussion with Johannesburg-based artists Lebogang Mogul Mabusela and Wezile Mgibe. The artists will deliver back-to-back presentations, offering a glimpse into the research and works produced throughout the Worldings virtual residency program, followed by a group conversation and live audience Q/A.
Working from their studios at the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa, Mabusela and Mgibe will be participating in the Worldings Virtual residency program throughout the months of August and September, 2021. During this international residency exchange Mabusela and Mgibe will have the opportunity to connect with a larger cohort of artists including Canadian artists Nura Ali (Calrgary, Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, the Métis Nation Region 3), and Vancouver based artists and award recipients Josephine Lee and Xwalacktun who reside on the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
This residency exchange is hosted in partnership with the Bag Factory, a non-profit contemporary visual art organisation in Newtown, Johannesburg. It is presented in conjunction with “Worldings” a collaborative, multi-layered project that includes an exhibition of the work of South African artist William Kentridge curated by Lisa Baldissera, as well as a public program and residency series that will explore the unique artistic perspectives and histories that exist between the Canadian and South African experience as seen through the eyes of artists, writers, curators and activists. This program will focus on resiliency through the lens of the historical events of the last year, and the ways in which solidarity, resistance and advocacy are remitted in hope, for their capacities to elicit lasting structural change and collective care.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Lebogang Mogul Mabusela
Lebogang Mogul Mabusela (b.1996) is a multidisciplinary artist and a self-proclaimed monotypebabe and zinequeen based in Johannesburg. In 2019 she graduated with a BA in Fine Arts from the Wits School of Arts where she was also awarded the Standard Bank Fine Arts Prize. Mabusela has participated in a number of group exhibitions at the Wits Art Museum, The Project Space, Turbine Art Fair and Latitudes Art Fair, Design Indaba in Cape Town as part of top the 50 Emerging Creatives class of 2020 and more recently she was a recipient of the Young Womxn Studio Bursary sponsored by Sam Nhlengethwa and the Bag Factory Artists' Studios, at the end of her studio stay she participated Monotypes… A Monotypebabe Experience, a group show she co-produced and curated at the Bag Factory. Mabusela prides herself in being the founder of Makoti Technologies™ (est 2017) a Bridal gifts shop offering a dynamic range of gunz, tools and technologies that enhance women's desires and roast patriarchy, keeps them safe while maintaining their attitudes.
Wezile Mgibe
Wezile Mgibe is an art practitioner whose interdisciplinary practice encompasses performance, film, installation as a tool for social change. His work confronts prejudices and advocates against social inequality and creates a platform for critical self- reflexivity within unwelcoming spaces. Mgibe’s work is influenced by how things have come to existence, as well as motivations behind certain movements, reactions, human behaviors and mostly how these become symbols. Mgibe’s noted international commissioned projects includes video performance with LEAD Project and LSE Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa, M1/M2 Highway Billboard Feature by Centre for Less good ideas, A Film by Human Rights Defender Hub Artivism and University of York (CAHR) A contemporary trained movement artist who runs an On site project in public realm, is very interested in the concept of Belonging.