Name: Kemang Wa Lehulere
Place of Birth: Cape Town, South Africa
Year of Birth: 1984
Area of Work/Media: Drawing, Painting, Video, Installation, Performance
Website: www.gugulective.net
Education and Work
Kemang Wa Lehulere works in a variety of mediums including mixed media drawings and painting, video, installation and live performance art. He was born in Cape Town in 1984 on the 2nd of March and now lives in Johannesburg. After matriculating in 2002, he undertook an-‘Introductory course in Film and Television’ at the Community Film and Video Education Trust. In the same year, Wa Lehulere undertook a two-year diploma at Arts and Media Access Centre (formally known as CAP), through which he took part in numerous art workshops including painting, printmaking and sculpture. In the year 2005, Wa Lehulere took part in a workshop and group exhibition dealing with gender issues within the visual art in South Africa titled ‘Women’s’ Spaces’ at the South African National Gallery curated by Gabi Ngcobo.
In 2006 Wa Lehulere worked as a Camera Assistant and a researcher for Destine Nation Productions. In the same year he participated in an exhibition Amajita in Conversation curated by Thembinkosi Goniwe and later co-founded artist collective, Gugulective. With the Gugulective he co-curated and self initiated three exhibitions at their project space in Gugulethu titled Akuchanywa, Akuchanywa Apha and Titled/Untitled in Cape Town. Since co-founding the Guguletive he has had an interest in working collaboratively and has collaborated on many artworks ranging from performance, and installations. For his collaborative piece Unyawo Aluna Mpumlo (the Foot Has No Nose) with Chuma Sopotela and Mwenya Kabwe, he received the inaugural Spier Contemporary 07 art award.
Wa Lehulere has also worked and toured with plays like Echoes Of Our Footsteps and Diaries of My Womanhood at the Baxter Theatre in Cape Town and at the National Arts Festival both directed by Ithumeleng Wa Lehulere. He has also worked in film and television, as a scriptwriter, presenter, soundman, researcher and trainee director for a number of documentary films for the South African Broadcasting Commission. In 2007 he participated in an exhibition dealing with issues of masculinity Legacy of Men curated by Jackie MacInnes.
Exhitions
Wa Lehulere has participated in a number of group exhibitions, workshops and residencies in South Africa and internationally including the Bag Factory in Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Today Art Museum in Beijing, China, the CAS Zuidas in Amsterdam, and Theater Hebbel Am Uffer in Berlin, Germany and the International Rotterdam Film Festival. Last year he held his first solo exhibition Ubontsi: Sharp Sharp! at the Association for Visual Arts in Cape Town, more recently, he published his creative writing in Anemka, in Alexandria, Egypt and Remembering Future Africa at the Chinua Achebe Centre for African Writers at Bard College in New York; he also participated in US curated by Bettina Malcolmess and Simone Njami at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Dada South at the South African National Gallery curated by Roger van Wyk and Kathryn Smith.
Wa Lehulere is currently completing his BA in Fine Art at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.
