Keynotes

Masimba Hwati is an artist originally from Harare, Zimbabwe, who works internationally in sculpture, sound, performance, and video. He holds a PhD from the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna, Austria, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A 2019 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture graduate, Hwati also studied sculpture at the Harare Polytechnic School in Harare, Zimbabwe.

An interdisciplinary artist, Masimba Hwati works at the intersections of sculpture, performance and sound. Known for unconventional mixed media and sound sculptures, he examines postcolonial themes by re-appropriating archives and objects and presenting them in new contexts. He collects historical, culturally imbued items ranging from cars to shoes, altering and repositioning them in a contemporary urban setting.

His work has juxtaposed dances such as The Detroit Jitt and Zimbabwe Jiti drawing parallels between social and cultural constructs. Recently completing a Phd exploring the places where sculpture ,sound and performance meet via sonic territorial marking, onomatopoeic and phonetic registers particularly in Shona culture. His work is often communicated by performance, audio and recorded in film.

His work may be found in collections internationally, including The Philharmonie de Paris; Darlene M. Perez Art Collection in Miami, Florida; University of Michigan Museum of Art; Iziko-South African National Gallery; George R. Nnamdi, Detroit Michigan; Scott White Contemporary, San Diego; Leridon & Gervanne, National Gallery of Zimbabwe; and Manchester Art gallery. During the 56th Venice Biennale, Hwati exhibited at the Zimbabwean Pavilion, and he participated in the 2021 British Textile Biennale. In Grahamstown, South Africa, he is an honorary research fellow at Rhodes University. His special projects and solo shows have been exhibited in England, Lagos, Belgium, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Germany, the United States, France, and Canada.

He is the author of Der Seeteufel: And Other Alien Species in the Mysteriously Dark Labyrinths of the Danube (2022) and Sokunge (As if) (2021). His albums include: Root Leaf (Collapsing Drums, 2025); Hwati Collino (Alien Passengers, 2022); and Lakenights (Alien Passengers, 2019). At the Clark, Hwati will continue work on a new book, titled Chidzimbahwe Sonic Philosophies.

Nomusa Makhubu is a Professor in Art History at the University of Cape Town.

She is the founder of Creative Knowledge Resources (CKR) – a open access platform for social justice arts.
Makhubu was the Deputy Dean for Transformation in Humanities Faculty at UCT University (2020-2022).

She was the recipient of the ABSA L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award in 2006
and the Prix du Studio National des Arts Contemporain, Le Fresnoy in 2014.

She received the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) African Humanities Program fellowship award
and was selected to be an African Studies Association (ASA) Presidential fellow in 2016.

In 2017, she was a UCT-Harvard Mandela fellow at the Hutchins Centre for African
and African American Research, Harvard University.

In 2017 and in 2023, she was the First Runner Up for the Department of Science and Technology (DST) Women in Science Awards.

Makhubu has co-curated exhibitions (including a co-curation of the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in Italy),
and she has published Creative Books and research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and book volumes.

Peju Layiwola is a multidisciplinary artist and art historian whose research and artistic practice engage questions of restitution, history, and memory, with particular focus on the 1897 British siege of Benin and the pillage of its heritage materials.
Her interdisciplinary practice bridges historical inquiry and material culture with a sustained interest in African textile traditions.

Layiwola’s solo exhibition Benin 1897.com: Art and the Restitution Question, played a key role in reviving public discourse on restitution within Nigeria. She has also co-curated two significant exhibitions at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne, Germany—RESIST! The Art of Resistance (2021-2022) and I Miss You (2022)—both of which created dialogue with museum collections in Koln that had hardly been exhibited since the siege. As a result of this intervention, some of these objects were returned to Nigeria by the German government. Two Benin objects in the Stanley Museum of Art collection were also returned directly to the Oba of Benin in 2024.

Prof Layiwola has published on textiles and dress culture, including an essay in African Lace: A History of Trade, Creativity and Fashion in Nigeria, (2010), and the article, “New Forms of Commemoration: Royal Textiles of Benin” (2019). Her work has also been the subject of critical studies, including Peju Layiwola’s Indigo Reimagined: Rethinking Adire in Yoruba and Textile Modernity, edited by Patrick Oloko (2021), and “Indigo Reimagined: A Conversation with Peju Layiwola,” in Textiles of Global Africa (2021).

Prof Layiwola was an artist -in-residence at the RAW Spot Gallery at Rhodes University (2018). She shares her time between Lagos and Iowa City and works as the Mellon Fellow for provenance research at the University of Iowa, Stanley Museum of Art, USA.

Sonjah Stanley Niaah is a Jamaican scholar, international speaker and Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies where she was Director of the Institute of Caribbean Studies (2015-2021). She is a leading author, teacher and researcher on Black Atlantic performance geographies, popular culture, and the sacred, and Caribbean Cultural Studies more broadly. She holds international appointments as member of the International Scientific Committee of the Routes of Enslaved Peoples Project (UNESCO), Expert Panel on Cultural Heritage Restitution (Ghana Next Steps on Reparatory Justice), Senior Research Associate (honorary), Rhodes University, and Advisor, International Cultural Diversity Organisation.

She is the author of numerous publications, among them the acclaimed Dancehall: From Slave Ship to Ghetto (2010) and editor of Dancehall: A Reader on Jamaican Music and Culture (2020). Her research and opinions have appeared in various media, among them Netflix, The Guardian, BBC, The Washington Post, NPR, The Fader and Pop Matters.

In 2019 she introduced the Sound Culture book series at the UWI Press which is dedicated to publishing original work on Caribbean music. She is also Editor of the new Intellect Books Journal of Caribbean Music and Sound Culture.

She currently serves as Director, Centre for Reparation Research and Interim Director, Indigenous and Maroon Studies Institute.