Khanyisile Mbongwa

Khanyisile Mbongwa is a Cape Town based independent curator, award-winning artist and sociologist who engages with her curatorial practice Curing & Care; using the creative to instigate spaces for emancipatory practices, joy and play.

Mbongwa is the curator of Puncture Points, founding member and curator of Twenty Journey and former Executive Director of Handspring Trust Puppets. She’s one of the founding members of the arts collective Gugulective, Vasiki Creative Citizens and WOC poetry collective Rioters In Session. 

She has worked locally and internationally since 2012 on various curatorial projects including Demonstrations: Performing Being Black (2013) in Cape Town, a residency at JIWAR in Spain (2015), What Will We Tell Freedom? (2016), Umnikelo Oshisiwe (2016) at Afreaka Festival in Brazil, BONE 19 Festival in Switzerland (2017) and the National Arts Festival in South Africa (2017). During her research residency at CAT.Cologne, she curated BLUEPRINT: Where There’s Nowhere To Go, Where Is Home? (2018).

Mbongwa has been a guest lecturer at the University of Cape Town, Durban University of Technology, University of Zurich, University of Basel, Rhodes University, and has been an adhoc lecturer at Cape Town Creative Academy.

Her Most recent projects include, in 2020, Process as Resistance, Resilience & Regeneration – a group exhibition co-curated with Julia Haarmann, and Athi-Patra Ruga’s solo iiNyanka Zonyaka (The Lunar Songbook) at Norval Foundation. In 2021, she curated History’s Footnote: On Love & Freedom at Marres, House for Contemporary Culture in Maastrict, Netherlands. Mbongwa was the Chief Curator of the Stellenbosch Triennale 2020 and is the Curator for the Liverpool Biennial 2023.