Date:
Thursday 28 August
Time:
11:00am for 13:00pm
Venue:
The CHR’s Iyatsiba Lab,
66 Greatmore Street, Woodstock
(enter via Regents St)
The Artists Forum, convened at the Centre for Humanities Research, emerges out a longstanding conversation between artists and academics working in and through the CHR. The Forum’s objective has been to connect scholarly exploration with the CHR’s Artist in Residency programme, and to bring artists and humanistic study into a more intimate adjacency.
In this engagement, Phokeng Setai will share insights into his craft and process, his work at the intersection between scholarship and practice, and his ‘belief that creativity thrives where disciplines collide.’
Artist Bio
Phokeng Setai (b. 1992, South Africa) is a curator and writer whose work moves fluidly between artistic inquiry, academic research, and cultural practice. With a sharp eye for emerging modes of cultural production, Setai’s curatorial projects often explore inventive formats and unexpected collaborations that rethink the role of art in society. In early 2024, he completed a PhD in Anthropology at the University of the Western Cape, where he was based at the Centre for Humanities Research. His doctoral research focused on contemporary African curatorial strategies and pedagogies, positioning him at the intersection of scholarship and practice.
Before joining Zeitz MOCAA, Setai served as Curator at Norval Foundation in Steenberg, Cape Town. During his time there, he curated Witness of My Time, a solo exhibition by Malian artist Famakan Magassa that opened in August 2023, and ran until January 2024.
Setai is an alumnus of several globally respected platforms—including RAW Material Company in Dakar, Independent Curators International in New York, Fundación Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Madrid, and G.A.S. Lagos—through which he has cultivated a distinctly international sensibility. He is also the co-ounder of Exhibition Match, an artistic initiative that draws from the culture of football to create new publics for art. The project is part social intervention and part curatorial experiment—evidence of Setai’s belief that creativity thrives where disciplines collide.
In 2024, he joined Zeitz MOCAA as Assistant Curator, where he brought his cross-disciplinary approach to one of the continent’s most ambitious platforms for contemporary art. Setai’s writing has appeared in The Thinker (University of Johannesburg), The Sole Adventurer, and ArtThrob. His interests span curatorial practice; the intersections of contemporary art, urbanism, and architecture; experimental music and sound ecologies; design; and the evolving infrastructures of cultural life on the Continent.