[photo credit: Johannes Dreyer]

M. Neelika Jayawardane

M. Neelika Jayawardane is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York-Oswego, and a Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD), University of Johannesburg (South Africa). She is a recipient of the 2018 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for a book project on the Afrapix, a South African photographers’ agency that operated during the last decade of apartheid. She was a founding member of the online magazine, Africa is a Country. Along with academic publications, her writing is featured in Aperture, Transition, Contemporary &, Contemporary Practices: Visual Art from the Middle East, and Even Magazine.

Recent programmes:

Reading the Moment: Photography, Power and the Ethics of Representation

Dialogue 1, 30 September 2020: Who gets to Picture, Narrate and Position? With Sama Raena Alshaibi, Andrew Jackson, Zora J Murff & Aaron Turner.

Dialogue 2, 29 October 2020: Imaged by History… With Benjamin Chesterton, Candice Jansen, Sarah Sentilles & Asim Rafiqui

Recent publications:

“Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama: Embracing the Dark Lionesses’ Call”. For Aperture (forthcoming in 2018).

“Chemutai Ngok” (catalogue entry). Songs for Sabotage. New Museum 2018 Triennale. Phaidon. 2018: 161-168.

“‘Durga of the Canefields’: Sharlene Khan’s When the Moon Waxes Red”. Essay for South African multimedia artist Sharlene Khan, artist’s book (2018).

“A Somber Commemoration of the Partition of India, 70 Years Later”. Hyperallergic. 19 January 2018.

Journalism:

“Saying goodbye to South Africa's legendary David Goldblatt”. Al Jazeera. Opinion. 26 Jun 2018.

“Art does not need another hero”. Al Jazeera. Opinion. 18 June 2018.

“Who gets to picture and narrate Africa?”. Al Jazeera. Opinion. 20 January 2018

“‘From No Fixed Place’, a space appears”. (Review of SOLO Exhibition at the 2018 Cape Town Art Fair). South African Mail&Guardian. 16 Feb 2018.

“The very American myth of 'exceptional immigrants'”. Al Jazeera. Opinion. 20 January 2018.