M. Neelika Jayawardane (facilitator)

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.

Olfa Feki

Olfa Feki grew up in Tunisia where she pursued her architecture studies. Through her academic training, she opened up to the world of art where she discovered a passion for visual art and more particularly for photography, as a tool to witness reality and communicate the different perspectives of societies. At a time where this artistic practice was not up front yet in her country, she started promoting photography on a national scale. During the Arab Spring, where photography became a weapon for freedom, she moved to an international scale by collaborating with renewed institutions and agencies such as the World Press Photo, Magnum agency, and NOOR agency to contribute to the establishment of the new generation of photojournalists of the North African shores. After founding the first visual art center in Tunisia, she moved to Egypt to pursue her curatorial career. She contributed to the recovery of the biennale of Cairo as one of the project managers of 2015 edition appointed to ensure the artistic direction of ‘Something Else 2015’, an edition conducted by Simon Njami as the main curator. Her curatorial adventure led her to travel around the world curating different exhibitions and biennales such as World Nomads New York 2013, Dak’art 2014, Bamako Encounters 2017, the second edition of the Biennale of Photographers of the Contemporary Arab World; IMA and La MEP 2017. Olfa has also been a jury/nominator for various contests: La chambre Claire Morocco 2016/2018, Joop Swart Masterclass for the World Press Photo 2017,2018/2019/2020, Paul Huf Price for the Foam Museum 2017/2018/2019, Cap Prize 2017/2018, Magnum foundation Grant 2017…

In 2016, she joined NOOR images agency in Amsterdam as a regional representative with the mission to ensure the visibility of the collective in the art world. A year later, and as an attempt to promote the local scene in Tunisia, she went back to her country to founded the first visual art festival; #kerkennah01. The first edition took place in June 2018. In 2019 She was named ‘Chevalier des arts et des Lettres’ by the French Minister, as a reward for having contributed in the artistic field and her contribution to the dissemination of arts in France and in the world. Following her move to Malte, where she settled to discover the local scene and create new connections and collaborations, she was appointed as one of the Curators of Jaou Photo 2021.

Jim Chuchu

Jim Chuchu is a filmmaker, musician and visual artist living and working in Nairobi, Kenya. Jim’s photographs debuted in the exhibition, “Precarious Imaging: Visibility and Media surrounding African Queerness” at RAW Material Company, a space for art and culture in Dakar, part of Dak’Art 2014.

In 2014, Jim co-founded the Nest Collective—a multidisciplinary art collective based in Nairobi, Kenya that has created works in film, music, fashion, visual arts and literature such as the critically-acclaimed queer anthology film Stories of Our Lives, which was banned in Kenya for ‘promoting homosexuality’. Despite the ongoing ban in the country, the film has so far screened in over 80 countries and won numerous awards such as the Jury Prize at the 2015 Berlinale Teddy Awards.

His photography and video works have since been exhibited and screened at the MoMA, the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Royal Pavilion and Museums, Guggenheim Bilbao, the Vitra Design Museum, and now form part of the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Jim co-founded HEVA in 2015, an East African creative business fund based in Kenya that invests in the creative economy sector in the East African region. Since its inception, HEVA has invested more than $3 million in the East African creative economy sector, innovated financial models specifically for the region, created networking, exchange and training opportunities for young entrepreneurs and pushed for policy and legal reforms to improve the sector.

Jim is currently serving as co-founding director of the Nest Collective–where current projects include an ongoing partnership in the International Inventories Programme, an international research and database project that has so far catalogued an inventory of 30,000 Kenyan cultural objects held in museums and public institutions across the globe–and HEVA, where he thinks through intervention strategies and future outlooks for the fund in his capacity as co-founding partner.

Lekgetho Makola

Currently the CEO of Javett-UP Art Centre at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, Lekgetho Makola is the former Head of Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg. He has been part of a number of diverse visual storytelling platforms and curatorial committees that include the Rencontres de Bamako in Mali, New York Times portfolio reviews, Curator of UNCTAD in Barbados 2021, Ernest Cole Award, The Art Bank South Africa, International Canon Student Development and Chairing the World Press Photo Awards General Jury 2020.

Lekgetho Makola’s artistic philosophy is embedded in social justice and advocacy as an International Ford Foundation Fellow on Social Justice. He sits on the advisory committees to the boards of CathLight and Social Documentary Network.

Lekgetho, a graduate of Howard University MFA Film Studies, has accumulated extensive strategic experience in arts administration and artistic programming from institutions he worked for in over two decades. He advocates for the professionalisation of the arts practice by supporting building of new characters into artistic institutions beyond the traditional. He is a founding member of Centres of Learning for Photography in Africa, a continental network for photographic hubs.