Khanyi Mawhayi

Biography

Khanyi Mawhayi studied for a Bachelor's in Fine Arts from 2017 to 2020, and during those years, was a founding member of the BLVCK BLOCK collective, which supports young artists through residencies and exhibition making. She assisted South African artist Tracey Rose in her capacity as Studio Master for the Kampala Biennial in 2020. She then joined the Bag Factory Studios in Johannesburg as Project Assistant Intern from September 2020 to January 2021.

She began working at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) as a Curatorial Assistant in September 2021, and has assisted on multiple solo and group exhibitions, including the seminal exhibition When We See Us: A Century of Black Figuration in Painting. In 2023, she served as project lead for the experimental Atelier programme, which invites a Cape Town-based artist to take part in an eight-month residency. The artist-in-residence was Unathi Mkonto, and she organised the programming around the exhibition, which included a reflexive conversation between the artist and their former architecture lecturer; an activation with guitarist Mpumelelo Mcata; and a multidisciplinary learning programme with art, architecture, and fashion students.

She is currently enrolled at the University of the Western Cape studying for a Master of Historical Studies, and her thesis is focused on the Johannesburg Biennial. She is also curating an exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA titled A Protea is Not a Flower, which is an intergenerational conversation between South African Modernist artists and writers as well as contemporary artists, set to open in October 2025. In 2025, she was nominated and now serves on the Employment Equity Committee of the Museum, which works to ensure that the institution remains fair in its employment practices and cultivates an inclusive work culture.

Khanyi Mawhayi, Curatorial Assistant at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town, South Africa, has been awarded by the Getty Foundation.