Buhlebezwe Siwani - Fundatie Forward

Museum de Fundatie presents Buhlebezwe Siwani's first solo exhibition in a Dutch museum.

Siwani works with performance, photography, sculpture and installations. She explores the way in which the black female body is framed in a male-dominated society. The black female experience within the context of South Africa is also central to her work. Siwani is a sangoma, a spiritual healer who works in the space between life and death. Her work therefore focuses on rituals and the relationship between Christianity and African spirituality. Her projects often deal with the connection between ancestral rituals and modern life, raising social and political issues. Siwani always draws on her own life story and experiences.

Buhlebezwe Siwani, Mombathiseni, 2021, wool, installation at Musée d'Arte Moderne, Paris, photograph: Pierre Antoine

This exhibition is part of the Fundatie Forward programme, a series of first solo museum exhibitions by contemporary artists who live and work (partly) in the Netherlands. With this series, Museum de Fundatie aims to set something in motion and offer the artists a platform.
Buhlebezwe Siwani (born 1987, South Africa) obtained her BAFA from the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2011 and her MFA from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2015. She is on the shortlist for the Prix de Rome (2025), was nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize (2024) and was awarded the Standard Bank Young Artists Awards 2021 in the visual arts category. Solo exhibitions: Intsomi, No Man's Art Gallery, Amsterdam (2025); ulwela amaza, Rozenstraat - a rose is a rose, Amsterdam (2024); iYeza, Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg (2023); Amanzi angena endlini, Madragoa, Lisbon (2022); Dedisa ubumnyama, Cairns Art Gallery, Cairns (2021). Group exhibitions: Good Mom/Bad Mom, Centraal Museum, Utrecht (2025); Manifesto 15 (2024); 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2023); Chrysalis, The Butterfly Dream, Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Geneva (2023); A Clearing in the Forest, TATE Modern, London (2022). Buhlebezwe Siwani lives and works in Amsterdam and Cape Town.

Header image: Buhlebezwe Siwani, iSikhumbuzo, 2021, polystyrene, preem soap, wooden plinth, lacquer, AkzoNobel Art Foundation collection, photograph: Neeltje de Vries

Stay informed