Khanyi Mawhayi

 

Khanyi Mawhayi (b. 1998) is an artist, writer, and curator from Kagiso, South Africa. She is a multimedia artist who works with form and language and tackles themes such as family, tradition, and culture. Mawhayi’s work is concerned with self-location and identity formation. She explores how abstraction can be used to achieve the right to opacity in relation to identity formation. Drawing from art history, popular culture, and personal experience, Mawhayi sees her wider practice as a reflection on her mission to live comfortably within multiplicities.

 

She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2020. In 2021, she held her first solo offering at Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, Her work has also been included in the Kampala Biennale (2020), the Zózimo Bulbul Black Film Festival in Brazil (2022), and What We Know (2023). She is currently based in Cape Town and is a curatorial assistant at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa.