ARTIST. POET. THINKER. HOMIE. LOVER. FRIEND.
ARTIST. POET. THINKER. HOMIE. LOVER. FRIEND.
Kwazokuhle Phakathi is AN interdisciplinary artist exploring the world through photography, text and performance. he is an independent curator and the co-founder & creative lead at tombe magazine
I am a South African interdisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg, working across photography, text, and performance. My practice is a sustained investigation into expression, memory, and imagination: what it means to be, to remember, and to envision.
At its core, my work engages with questions of queer(ed) identities, spatial politics, and the construction of counter-histories/imagined futures. Photography entered my life as an instinctive act of preservation, a way to hold on and trace time. It has become a language through which I think and rebuild, a site of reconfiguration and return to what remains unseen.
My work moves through the intimacies and contradictions of being, navigating the thresholds between the physical and the spiritual. I am drawn to the invisible architectures that hold us together: movement, energy, inheritance.
The practice engages deeply with counter-histories: the retrieval of narratives obscured by dominant forms of representation. I see history as unstable, continuously rewritten by power/omission/desire. Through performance, writing, and image-making, I gather fragments of collective and inherited memory, tracing how the past endures in land, in gesture, and in residue.
Alongside this, I explore imagined futures as a speculative method and critical site of resistance, a place where the imagination itself becomes a decolonial tool. My work often asks what new worlds, or new selves, might take form once we move beyond capital, normativity, and systemic control. Through this unraveling, I continue to search for reorientation: toward love, toward care, and toward the possibilities of being.
THE PRACTICE
Biography
Kwazokuhle Phakathi [He/They] is a South African interdisciplinary artist and cultural entrepreneur born in Durban (b.1998) and based in Johannesburg. Working across photography, text and performance, their practice explores queer(ed) identities, spatial politics and counter-histories / imagined futures.
Phakathi’s work has been exhibited in South Africa and internationally, including at the Javett Art Centre, Lagos Photo Festival, Deichtorhallen Klub der Kunste (Hamburg), Latitudes Center for the Arts / Kalashinokovv (Johannesburg), Stevenson Gallery (Johannesburg), Kranj Photo Festival (Slovenkia), Koop Projects (UK), and the National Arts Festival (Makhanda), amongst others. They have also contributed to collaborative research projects on queer spaces with the French Institute of South Africa and investigations addressing social justice with the European Union Gateways For Peace Project. He is the co-founder and creative lead at Tombe Magazine, a platform dedicated to championing African photography from across the continent and the diaspora.
An alumnus of Market Photo Workshop and Through The Lens Collective, Phakathi currently serves as associate curator at A42, a pan-African initiative transforming museums for the new generation, founded by the Institute for Creative Repair.
CV
Education
2021
Mid-Level Course in Photography, Through The Lens Collective
2022
Foundation Course, Market Photo Workshop
2023
Advanced Course in Photography, Through The Lens Collective
Group Exhibitions
2022
The Nature of Photography, Victoria Yards, Johannesburg, South Africa
Meeting of Minds, Studio Mecca, Johannesburg, South Africa
Post-Card Africa, Lagos Photo Festival, Lagos, Nigeria
2023
Notions of Home, Identity & Belonging, Javett Art Centre at The University of Pretoria,
Pretoria, South Africa
2024
This Kind of Light, Koop Projects, Brighton, United Kingdom
AI vs HI, Deichtorhallen Klub der Kunste, Hamburg, Germany
Talking Loud, National Arts Festival, Makhanda, South Africa
Curator’s Kiki, Stevenson, Johannesburg, South Africa
Opening Night Showcase, Kranj Photo Festival, Kranj, Slovenia (Projection)
The Uncanny, Through The Lens Collective for FNB Art Joburg Open City, Johannesburg,
South Africa
Zeigen Was Ist Foto Festival, Hamburg, Germany
2025
Tswela pele (keep going/progress), Kalashnikovv Gallery + Latitudes Centre of the Arts,
Johannesburg, South Africa
Mentorships & Collaborative Projects
2022
Faku Gesi Visual Arts Bootcamp, Tshimolong Precinct
What is a Queer Space? Collaborative research project w/ IFAS (The French Institute of
South Africa)
2023
European Union Gateways For Peace Project: Xenophobia in Southern Africa
Publications
Kwazokuhle Phakathi: Almost Everything Has Happened / Photography+ Photoworks UK [read]
World’s Noteworthy Emerging Photographers / IMA Magazine Japan Apr/May Issue 2024
Tombe Magazine is an PAN African platform dedicated to showcasing contemporary African photography and visual storytelling from across the continent and its diaspora. Founded by Kwazokuhle Phakathi and Michelle Loukidis, the magazine aims to amplify diverse voices and narratives, providing a space for photographers to share their unique perspectives. Through its curated issues, open calls and exhibitions, Tombe Magazine fosters a community that celebrates the richness and complexity of African identities, histories, and futures.
TOMBE
As Creative Lead at Tombe Magazine, my role involves defining the curatorial and editorial approach of the platform. In collaboration with the team, I conceptualize and develop programs, workshops, and research projects, focusing on African photography, and I facilitate interviews and construct the articles across our current issues. I’m also involved in developing our digital exhibitions and in cultivating a community of emerging and established image-makers across the African continent and its diaspora.