25, Performance artistTandile is a performance artist, choreographic-activist, educator, speaker, host, producer, model and scholar based in Cape Town, South Africa. They have performed at PERFORMA17 Biennale in New York and featured in Zoe Modiga's set at Afropunk. Performed an art installation with Viviers Studio at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and opened for FAKA at the Cape Town Electronic Music Festival. Produced the Solo Ball, a film, on the virtual National Arts Festival curated programme and recently hosted and managed the event for Tshisimani Centre for Activist Education’s Pocket Queerpedia launch. They have also worked with internationally acclaimed artist Zanele Muholi.Tandile premiered their work ‘Intyatyambo Iyaphuma Engxondorheni’ at Gavin Krastin’s Arcade, an annual nomadic platform. They seek to break hegemonic notions of existence through the use of performance art to bring about critical awareness of the LGBTIQ+ community. They identify as a gender non-conforming body living in an intersectional “male” body and are a masters candidate at the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies through the Institute for Creative Arts. Artist Alliance Documentary Meet scholar, educator and Choreographic activist Tandile Mbatsha. Tandile, who is trained as a dancer, has been a performance artist since 2018; making use of their theatrical and formal dance education to inform their practice. Tandile's performance art practice wants to bring about a critical awareness of the LGBTQ+ community and is currently focused on recouping an African queer narrative. To Tandile, being selected as part of the V&A Waterfront's Artist Alliance, indicates that both their work and their community are being recognised. An important feat because the opening up of spaces that cultivates these types of opportunities for artists also cultivate sustainable art futures. Artist Alliance Creation Mbambo z’nomongoAs the semiotics in the work suggest, Mbambo z’nomongo, is asserting themselves in and through their Black, Queer, Xhosa, and gender non-conforming lineage. Mbambo z’nomongo is my clan’s name, ever self-determining, unrelenting in asserting queerness as African, in Africa! The continued obliteration and blatant exclusion of the LGBTIAQ+ community from South African and African history, while passively consuming queer culture, results in the deadly hate crimes directed at us. Platforming Queer herstories, -positively- and not only when we are brutally killed is only the beginning of countering the deficit and negative discourse around Queer subjectivities.
