BY FIONA MOTSA
EZULWINI– An artist from the Kingdom of Eswatini has been selected for the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art through Africa’s joint fellowship program.
Bulelwa Kunene is one of five other African curators, artists and writers who have been selected for this fellowship which will be running from February 2023 to January 2024 at the University of Western Cape and Cape Town.
The program offers fellows practical museum experience at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa and offers fellows a chance to attend classes at the University of Cape Town as part of the University’s humanities department.
When sought for comment about this opportunity, Bulelwa stated that she was really excited about the prospect of being part of really great institutions.
“I am really excited to be a part of these two great institutions for a year and I am appreciative of the efforts being made by Zeitz and the University of Western Cape to grow the pool of young African curators.
“As someone who been engaged in the arts in Eswatini through Yebo Art Gallery for a year, I have had the privileged of being able to see the massive amount of potential our creative industry has which unfortunately is not so untapped because of lack of resources,” said Kunene.
Kunene further added that she had gained a lot of new experiences as an intern at Yebo Art Gallery.
“I have gained a lot of experience at Yebo Art Gallery and I am looking forward to a continued working relationship. I am really interested in how we can protect women, specifically low- income rural women within the handcraft space.
“My research will be focused on curatorial considerations of exhibiting handcraft work in creative institutions and ways the creative sectors in Eswatini can contribute to amending existing power imbalances and exploitative practices between artisans and the art market,” said the curator.
