The University of Johannesburg’s Arts & Culture, a division within the Faculty of Art, Design, and Architecture (FADA) is proud to announce the fourth cohort of artists selected for the 2025 Artists in Residence (AIR) programme. This programme is designed to foster research through artistic practice, tasking artists to complete at least one creative output project within a 12-month period, meeting the Department of Higher Education’s standards for creative output. On 26 August 2024, the UJ Artists in Residence Programme issued its fourth call for submissions through the Creative Outputs Task Team consisting of representatives from across the institution.
Over 324 artists from around the globe expressed keen interest in collaborating with the Creative Outputs Task Team. Ultimately, 219 applications were received. From this pool of applicants, seven outstanding artists were chosen to participate in the 2025 AIR Programme.
‘In a country as dynamic and multifaceted as ours, arts practice research is essential in promoting dialogue, celebrating identity, and driving inclusive social transformation. Arts practice research plays a pivotal role in shaping the cultural and social landscape of South Africa. By exploring new forms of expression, understanding, and creativity, it fosters deeper connections between diverse communities and bodies of knowledge. Arts practice as research not only enriches our cultural heritage but also addresses contemporary issues, offering innovative solutions to societal conflicts and challenges,’ says Pieter Jacobs, Head of Arts & Culture.
The University of Johannesburg (UJ) Artists in Residence (AIR) Programme aims to advance arts-practice as research in one or a combination of Visual Arts and Fine Arts, Music, Theatre, Performance and Dance, Design, Film and Television, and Literary Arts.
The selected artists are as follows:
Muhammad Dajee – Design Residency, hosted by APB Post Graduate School of Architecture
Muhammad Dawjee is an artist working with sound, space and music, from racially designated Indian apartheid group-area, Laudium, Pretoria. As a 90s (post-)apartheid rainbow child, he’s always been grappling with the nuanced identities of South African brown people(s) and uses music, sound and space to unearth histories of generational colonial subjugation, migration and pursuits of liberation. Since relocating to Johannesburg in 2015, he cofounded the indo-jazz trio Kinsmen, served as a member of the pan-Afrikan septet iPhupho L’ka Biko and toured internationally with the acclaimed experimental performance-art ensemble The Brother Moves On (TBMO). From 2019-2021, he co-led Unit 19: The Act of Service, a design research unit unpacking relations between ideology, mythology and space in (post-)apartheid South African cities at the Graduate School of Architecture (GSA), University of Johannesburg. Since 2022, he’s been obsessed with water and rivers as vibratory archives of collective memory.
His interactive installation, spectres of //khamis sa: a listening well, was exhibited in the Oscillations – Cape Town-Berlin group exhibition at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in May 2024.
Bongani Mncube – Film and Television residency, hosted by APK Communication and Media Studies
Bongani Mncube is a 24-year-old filmmaker and media practitioner from Johannesburg, South Africa, with a distinguished background in film, television, and digital media. He is currently pursuing his second year Master of Arts in Audiovisual Communication at the University of Johannesburg (UJ), where his research focuses on the uptake of Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies by South African filmmakers, particularly in relation to storytelling, production processes, and digital innovation. Bongani graduated with distinction in Film & Television Studies at the Honours level from UJ in 2022. His academic excellence has been recognized through multiple awards, including the prestigious UJenius Certificate and all place on the Dean’s List in 2020.
His academic work is complimented by his professional experience as an intern at UJTV working as Presenter, Director, Producer, and Video Editor, where he manages the production of creative content, leads teams and engages with diverse audiences. Bongani has also worked on prominent projects in the South African film industry, including serving as a 2nd and 3rd Assistant Director for MTV Shuga Down South Season 3 and as an actor on SABC1’s Mysterious Cube.
His dedication to integrating 4IR technologies into African filmmaking is driving his current creative work, which explores the use of AI, VR, and AR to revolutionize African storytelling and push the boundaries of digital media convergence. With a commitment to both academic research and creative innovation, Bongani’s work is at the forefront of blending African narratives with technological advancements, positioning him as a rising talent in the African film industry. His goal is to foster a unique African voice in media, driving societal change through film and digital media.
Justin Fox – Literary Arts Residency, hosted by APK English Department
Justin Fox is a novelist, poet and travel writer based in Cape Town; formerly the editor of Getaway travel magazine. He was a Rhodes Scholar and received a doctorate in English from Oxford University. He was a research fellow at the University of Cape Town, where he taught part time for two decades. His articles and photographs have appeared internationally in dozens of publications and on a wide range of topics, while his short stories and poems have appeared in various anthologies. Justin Fox has written scripts and directed award-winning documentaries and is a two-time Mondi journalism award winner.He’s written 25 books; some recent titles include Cape Town Calling (Tafelberg, 2007), Under the Sway (Umuzi, 2007), The Marginal Safari (Umuzi, 2010), Whoever Fears the Sea (Umuzi, 2014), The Impossible Five (Tafelberg, 2015), Beat Routes (Karavan Press, 2021), The Cape Raider (Penguin, 2021) and Place: South African Literary Journeys (Umuzi, 2023).
He’s been long-listed for both the 2011 and 2024 Alan Paton Award for non-fiction, the 2012 Olive Schreiner Prize for Literature, the 2014 Etisalat Prize for Literature, and both the 2014 and 2022 Sunday Times Fiction Award. Justin Fox the 2014 winner of the Patricia Schonstein Poetry in McGregor Award.
Franco Prinsloo – Music Residency, hosted by UJ Arts & Culture
Franco Prinsloo, an accomplished composer and conductor hailing from Pretoria, South Africa, has garnered acclaim for his award-winning contributions to contemporary classical music. Specialiszing in choral and vocal compositions and music for theatre and dance, Prinsloo has demonstrated a mastery of diverse musical styles.
In 2019, he earned the prestigious ACT IMPACT AWARD for Young Professionals from the Nedbank Arts and Culture Trust in recognition of his outstanding composition skills. Further solidifying his status in the artistic community, Prinsloo was honored with the Medal of Honour for Art by the South African Academy of Science and Art in 2023.
Prinsloo’s notable choral work, “Wieglied,” achieved widespread recognition, earning him an Aitsa! award for the best classical music track of the year in 2023. Additionally, his album with the Vox Chamber Choir resulted in the South African Music Award for the album “Fire Beast,” featuring original compositions that have been featured on various Spotify playlists.
The year 2023 also marked Prinsloo’s nomination at the South African Film and Television Awards for Best Soundtrack, recognizing his exceptional musical contributions to the Showmax original series, “Donkerbos,” with the Vox Chamber Choir. Prinsloo also received a nomination for best original soundtrack at the Silwerskermfees for his score for the feature film “Wonderlus”.
Bev Butkow – Visual and Fine Arts Residency, hosted by UJ Art Gallery
Bev Butkow is a South African spatial-weaver and research-based artist, who arrived late to the arts, first holding a paintbrush in her mid-40’s. Her personal shape-shifting journey has seen her explore both financial-mathematical-left-brain and the more embodied experiences of an artist-woman/artist-mother.
Woven throughout Butkow’s 2023 solo exhibition titled re-weaving mother at the Origins Centre Museum, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, was the presence of care for her tactile human-made materials, an ailing planet, the body, and for one another.
Butkow has exhibited locally and internationally, including at the 2022 Dakar Biennale, Senegal and 1-54 Art Fair in London. She showed tactile immersive installations at the curated Yi Tai Projects, Art Central Hong Kong 2023 and Tomorrows/Today, Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2022. She presented her work at 2022 Contextile Bienal TextileTALKS, Portugal and at various academic conferences, and is published in peer-reviewed academic journals.
Zebra Collective – Fine Arts Residency, hosted by APB Visual Art
The Zebra Collective is an artistic collaboration between Dr. Michael Gould, a music professor at the University of Michigan, and Masimba Hwati, an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. They started working together in 2022 in Berlin to create Nyami Nyami, a project with the Tanz Tangente dance school and gallery. This installation and performance series explores how climate change and human activities are affecting the Tonga people along the Zambezi River, placing these issues in the broader context of the Anthropocene era. The collective’s work combines sculpture and technology to examine the ecological and cultural impact of the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River, with the river deity Nyami Nyami symbolizing nature’s resistance to human influence. Over time, the Zebra Collective has developed and performed several versions of Nyami Nyami.
Oupa Sibeko – Visual & Fine Arts Residency, hosted by APB Visual Art
Oupa Sibeko is an interdisciplinary artist whose work moves between theatrical, gallery, scholarly and other public contexts, overtly dealing with matter and politics of the body as a site of contested works. He graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand with a Bachelor of Art in Performance and Visual Arts in 2015 and since 2021 he is holding a Master of Fine Arts from the same University. Through his work enabling opportunities for affective and relational encounters using ritualistic performance and play, he seeks to critically engage approaches to the body, particularly the black male body, the history of representation and the ways in which certain subjectivities have been (and are) figured, (black) pain, (black) spectacle, (black) negation, and the ethical implications of reimaging and re-enacting pain.
It is through African indigenous knowledge that he comes to understand and unpack his artistic practice. It is also from the same source that he borrows key elements of his performances, especially in relation to ritual and communal performances, theatre in the round, site-specific performances and the exchange of cultural Knowledge in a shared communal space.
About UJ Arts & Culture
UJ Arts & Culture, a division of the Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture (FADA) produces and presents world-class student and professional arts programmes aligned to the UJ vision of an international university of choice, anchored in Africa, dynamically shaping the future. A robust range of arts platforms are offered on all four UJ campuses for students, staff, alumni, and the general public to experience and engage with emerging and established Pan-African and international artists drawn from the full spectrum of the arts.
In addition to UJ Arts & Culture, FADA (www.uj.ac.za/fada) offers programmes in eight creative disciplines, in Art, Design and Architecture, as well as playing home to the NRF SARChI Chair in South African Art & Visual Culture, and the Visual Identities in Art & Design Research Centre. The Faculty has a strong focus on sustainability and relevance, and engages actively with the dynamism, creativity, and diversity of Johannesburg in imagining new approaches to art and design education.