Buhlebezwe Siwani (born in 1987, Johannesburg, South Africa; lives and works in Cape Town and Amsterdam) works with performance, photography, sculpture, and installation. Buhlebezwe’s work interrogates the patriarchal framing of the Black female body and the Black female experience within the South African context. As an initiated Sangoma, a spiritual healer that works within the space of the dead and the living, Buhlebezwe focuses her artistic practice on rituality and the relationship between Christianity and African spirituality. Her own body is central to her work, which operates in multiple registers as subject, object, form, medium, material, language, and site.
Works
Buhlebezwe Siwani at Arsenal Contemporary Toronto
Location: Arsenal Contemporary Art Toronto
Buhlebezwe Siwani’s artistic practice focuses on black women, their place and role in the cultural tradition of African spirituality and religious rituals through which beliefs are performed. The presence of the black female body in her performances brings into play a subjectivity committed to repossessing and refocusing attention on historically…
Programs
In Conversation: Dr. George Mahashe and Buhlebezwe Siwani
2022 Biennial artist Buhlebezwe Siwani is joined by Dr. George Mahashe for an intimate conversation that brings together Mahashe’s ongoing research at the intersection of artistic practice, archives, and anthropology with Siwani’s work, which interrogates the patriarchal framing of the Black female body and experience within the South African context.…