UJ Artists In Residence
The University of Johannesburg (UJ) is pleased to announce that its highly regarded Artists in Residence (AIR) Programme is now accepting applications for 2024. The initiative offers a unique opportunity for artists to embark on innovative practice led research, showcase their work, and contribute to the vibrant artistic community at the institution.
Since inception of the programme two years ago, sixteen artists have been selected to work on a range of exciting projects including several bio-art projects, music compositions, novellas, documentaries, and theatre productions. The first cohort includes Brenton Maart, Mbuso Ndlovu, Mai Al Shazly, Jaun Orantia, Yazeed Kamaldien, Lindiwe Matshikiza, Sonya Rademeyer, Kagiso Kekana, and Jamil Khan and the second, Carol-Ann Davids, Pieter Bezuidenhout, Mike Van Graan, Lucy Strauss, Dean Hutton, Shane Cooper, and Sabelo Mthembu.
The UJ Artists in Residence Programme welcomes applications from emerging and established artists, from across the globe, but preferably with a link to Africa. Applications for both physical and remote residencies are possible. Only proposals for projects that can be completed within a 12-month period and that fall within the following disciplines will be eligible:
• Visual Arts and Fine Arts
• Music
• Theatre
• Performance and Dance
• Design
• Film and Television
• Literary Arts
Eligible candidates will not have affiliations with other tertiary institutions in South Africa. The Artists in Residence Programme requires artists to complete at least one creative output project within a 12-month period that meets the Department of Higher Education’s requirements for creative output. For more information on creative submissions, click here to read more.
Successful applicants will be offered a 12-month residency and a monthly stipend of R10,000 (subject to statutory deductions) will be made available. The Programme is designed as a stimulus effort and no additional project / seed funding will be made available through the programme. The closing date for applications is 17:00 on 31 August 2023.
For inquiries, contact Jermain Johnson via email at air@uj.ac.za.

Current Artists In Residence

C.A Davids
"Worlding by CA Davids (working title)" is a quartet of novellas portraying a dynamic society across generations. The city's transformation over four centuries, politically, geographically, and socially, sheds light on themes like colonialism, enslavement, apartheid, capitalism, and environmental destruction. A profound exploration of history's enduring legacy.

Pieter Bezuidenhout
Pieter's Amal'ezulu project is a multi-disciplinary theatre production, based on Zulu poet Benedict Wallet Vilakazi's volume of poetry. It incorporates a narrator, soloists, male chorus, dancers, synthesisers, percussion, and instrumental ensemble, blending Western and traditional African music in Zulu and English. It premieres on November 2nd at UJ Arts Centre.

Mike Van Graan
Tables are for Turning by Mike van Graan is a non-verbal, visually focused project. It incorporates original poetry, soundscape, and video elements, delving into two major global fault lines: inequality (economic, military, political, cultural, social, etc.) and culture (diverse value systems, beliefs, histories). The project explores the complex intersections between these aspects.

Dean Hutton
Dean Hutton's Soft Radicals: Taking Space creates art for public environments, inviting intimate engagements at the intersection of art, love, and design. The works aim to provoke or inspire acts of care and resistance, fostering a powerful connection between viewers and the space they inhabit.

Sabelo Mthembu
Sabelo Mthembu's creative output, Melodi: The Evolution of South African Choral Music, delves into the timeline of choral music in the country. It explores different eras, analyzing the societal and political influences that shaped this musical tradition. This residency project offers a captivating journey through South Africa's choral music evolution.

Shane Cooper
Shane Cooper's Music Composition project explores the intersection of electronic music and jazz idioms in South Africa. He presents research and development updates on the connection between these genres, symbolically communicating core composition elements without music jargon. This ongoing project offers a captivating exploration of intersectional possibilities within the country's musical context.

Brenton Maart
Brenton Maart has been photographing the ruins of apartheid homelands for several years, such as government buildings, sports stadiums, factory parks, casinos and military headquarters. His aim will be to develop a lab-based method to visualise these images using microbiological processes, and this seminar presents the work-in-progress, in preparation for exhibition in May 2023.

Lucy Strauss
Computationally Interactive Bio-Art is a part of the current themes in the project Lucy is undertaking as an Artist in Residence at the Creative Microbiology Research Co-Lab, University of Johannesburg. This creative output will provide insight on the use of biological and non-biological materials in Human-Computer Interaction design and how this project has grown from her research on biological signals in interactive Music Technology.

Mbuso Ndlovu
African Traditional Choral Compositions and Arrangements is the title of Mbuso’s creative output project, where he aims to display how early exposure to diverse music-making settings has had an influence on his approach to composing and arranging South African Choral music. His approach is an attempt to preserve the Sub-Saharan African musical elements that characterise South African Traditional Choral music.
Previous Artists In Residence

Sonya Rademeyer
Kagiso Kekana and Sonya Rademeyer's collaborative project explores Mycelium as a metaphor for interconnectedness and cultural healing in South Africa. They learn from indigenous healers to inform their Creative Output, Sound and Soil, reflecting the connecting matrix of Mycelium to culture and indigenous healing practices as the nourishing knowledge system (Osmond).

Kagiso Kekana
Kagiso Kekana and Sonya Rademeyer's collaborative project explores Mycelium's role in cultural healing through art, re-imagining it as a connecting matrix to indigenous healing practices (Osmond).

Jamil Khan
Co-authored by Jamil F. Khan and Zanta Nkumane, "How We Love" challenges dominant narratives on queer social organization, offering an informed perspective through scholarship, theory, and firsthand accounts. Focusing on queer friendship and platonic love, the project aims to redefine queer lives, combating hypersexualization and suspicion of covert sexual relations in queer friendships.

Mai Al Shazly
Mai's project, The Broken Trade Winds, delves into historical material, including English earthenware, to examine the significance of trading during British colonization in Africa. The project explores exported English earthenware's popularity and its role as raw matter in colonial archives.

Juan Orrantia
Juan’s project titled Reassemblags, embodies his ongoing work that explores rephotographing and collage as strategies to unsettle the white male gaze and its relation to traditional forms of masculinity within the contexts of my youth in Colombia and my adult life in South Africa.

Yazeed Kamaldien
Yazeed has been working on his film project A Home Called Vogue which looks at the intersection of art, culture, and activism within the Vogue ball scene.

Lindiwe Matshikiza
Lindiwe will be presenting Five-Fingered Memory: A process-based, collaborative film project made between generations within one family; Exploring Black mobility, liberation, inheritance, resistance, mythmaking and age.