Kholisile Dhliwayo

Kholisile Dhliwayo (Australia) is an African-Australian curator, artist, and architect whose work engages Black Diasporic knowledge systems and cultural practices.

Kholisile founded afrOURban, a non-profit organization dedicated to documenting and celebrating Black culture in the diaspora and on the African continent. At afrOURban, he is the curator of Black Diasporas, an oral-narrative mapping project documenting spaces that have meaning to Black people. Black Diasporas has won awards from the Victorian Government (Australia), the New School Good Interventions (USA), and ArchiTeam (Australia) for its innovation and social contributions.

Kholisile is a 2023-24 Cheng Fellow with the Social Innovation Change Initiative – Harvard Kennedy School, and a 2023 Center for Architecture Lab Resident, where he curated ‘Making Home: Affirming Black Diasporic Agency’. He co-curated the award-winning Melbourne Design Week exhibitions SAY IT LOUD Naarm-Melbourne (2022) and Perspectives (2023).

He is also the artist behind the Brooklyn Bronzes sculptures at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MOCADA), honoring Black Brooklyn community leaders. As a built environment professional, Kholisile has contributed to projects in Australia, Canada, and the USA, including La Guardia Airport Terminal B, The Javits Center, The Canadian Senate Building, and David
Geffen Hall at the Lincoln Center.

CPR 2024: WIBH brings up to 8 international curators to Finland, Norway, and Sweden in September-October 2024 to research the regional art scene with the ambition to get a better understanding of the complex history and current political situation in the Nordics.