Siwani Buhlebezwe

(1987)

Biography

Buhlebezwe Siwani was born in 1987, in Johannesburg, South Africa. She currently lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Siwani works in the area of performance art and installations, she also includes photographs and videos of some of her performances. Siwani completed her BAFA(Hons) at the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2011 and her MFA at the Michealis School of Fine Arts in 2015. She has exhibited at the Michaelis Galleries in Cape Town, a site-specific exhibition in collaboration with APEX Art, New York City, in 13th Avenue, Alexandra township, Commune 1, and Stevenson in Cape Town. She has been exhibited in art institutions such as Documenta 14, Foundation Louis Vuitton, PAC museum Milan, Kalmar Art Museum, Sweden, Theater Spektakel, Zurich, Switzerland.

Style

Siwanis’ work looks into the patriarchal framing of the black female body and black female experience specifically in the South African context. As an artist, one of the ways Siwani chooses to explore her experiences is through her own body thus speaking through it to the viewer. “This is why I put myself in. Who better understands my own experiences, my own memories and my own journey than myself?” Siwani says in one of the interviews. Siwani has also used her artistic practice to delve into religious subjects and the intertwined yet difficult relationship between Christianity and traditional, stemming from deep history, African spirituality. In addition to her independent practice, Siwani is one of the founding members of the artist collective IQhiya, which was formed as an activist response to the lack of exhibition opportunity and under-representation of black female artists in the South African art world.

Sources:

Buhlebezwe Siwani Biography. Internet access: https://www.buhlebezwesiwani.com/

What If The World. Internet access: https://www.whatiftheworld.com/artist/buhlebezwe-siwani/