Ernest Cole Award 2022 Shortlist
The Ernest Cole Award 2022 shortlist is Lunathi Mngxuma, Motlhoki Nono, Phumzile Khanyile and Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo. The shortlist was selected independently by the Jury, and the recipient of the Ernest Cole Award 2022 will be announced 27 July.
The Ernest Cole Award was established to commemorate Ernest Cole and to acknowledge him both as a key figure in the history of South African photography and as a contributor to the struggle against apartheid. Cole’s images are transformative, compassionate, and critical, and marks the importance of photography in history and art making.
Lunathi Mngxuma
Lunathi Mngxuma (b. 1998) in Lady Frere in Eastern Cape, South Africa and based in
Thokoza, Gauteng. Mngxuma is a photographer and visual artist who through mask making and poignant self-portraits, explores grief. His start in photography came from conversations with his friends; he found out that most of them had hobbies that they wouldn’t talk about. He decided to explore photography, and was introduced through the Of Soul and Joy Photography project in 2016.
Mngxuma believes that through photography one can start conversations and raise debates.
Motlhoki Nono
Motlhoki Nono (b. 1998 in Mabopane, Pretoria) completed her Honours in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand. Her studio practice is currently based in Johannesburg, where she uses photography, video and printmaking as tools to investigate the intimacies and violences that are implicated in romantic love. She engages the nuanced ideas of inheritance, consumption, texture, and materiality to perform and document the internal lives and politics of black women in love. Her practice is characterised by a valorisation, problematisation and curiosity towards black love, as well as abstract narrative and relationalities of the domestic and heart spaces. She defines her practice as a decolonial and sociological enquiry into love, exploring how love manifests at the intersection of race, class and gender. Currently, Nono is interested in domestic gestures as a manifestation of love, and the domestic space as a site of self-erasure.
Phumzile Khanyile
Phumzile Khanyile (b. 1991, Soweto) lives and works in Johannesburg. Khanyile is a Market Photo Workshop graduate. She is the recipient of the 2015 Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in Photography mentored by Ayana V. Jackson. She was awarded the 2018 CAP Prize, and in 2020 she became the first winner for The Artphilein Photobook Project Contest.
Since her debut exhibition at the Market Photo Workshop in 2017, Khanyile has been featured in The Financial Times, Aperture, The British Journal of Photography, Elephant, Art Africa Magazine, CNN, the New York Times, and Vice Magazine. She has also been part of several exhibitions including NGV Triennial (Melbourne), ‘Welcome Home Vol. II’ (Marrakesh), ‘AFROTOPIA’ (Bamako). Others include the Africa Museum (Bergen Dal), ‘Not the Usual Suspects’ (Cape Town), and ‘African Passions’ (Évora). Her work is featured in local and international collections, in Europe and the US.
Phumzile Khanyile has also founded a project space with fellow artist Nkosinathi Khumalo called Zulu Republik.
Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo
Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo (b. 1993) is a photographer based in Lawley, Johannesburg.
He uses the tavern run by his parents as a studio in which to investigate themes of first-hand and generational trauma, violence and memory. Hlatshwayo was mentored by the photographer Jabulani Dhlamini and photography curator and educator John Fleetwood.
He won the 2019 CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography with his series ‘Slaghuis I’. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Fotomuseum Winterthur, IAF Basel Festival, and Johannesburg’s Turbine Art Fair.
Hlatshwayo was the Gisèle Wulfsohn Photography Mentorship Recipient for 2019. He held his first solo exhibition, ‘Slaghuis II’ at the Market Photo Workshop in February 2020, and was an overall winner of the international Blurring the Lines photo award for 2020. His work will be featured at the upcoming Rencontres de Bamako, African Biennale of Photography, Mali.
To learn more about the shortlist and the Award, contact info@phototool.co.za or visit https://www.phototool.co.za/ to access the Ernest Cole Award website, under the ‘Awards’ tab.