The Bag Factory is delighted to announce that Cheriese Dilrajh and Hemali Khoosal have been selected as joint recipients of the annual Young Womxn Studio Bursary, funded by Bag Factory alumni artist Sam Nhlengethwa. They will share a fully funded studio bursary at the Bag Factory for twelve months from October 2020 to September 2021.
The response to the call for applications for this year’s Young Womxn Studio Bursary was overwhelming, demonstrating a high level of talented emerging womxn artists in South Africa. Taking into consideration the challenges of the current global economic climate and the strength of the applications received, we decided to maximise the benefit of this bursary by offering it to two promising emerging womxn artists. We are thrilled that Cheriese and Hemali were open to this proposal and they are both excited at the prospect of working together in a creative environment that promotes exchange and experimentation.
The Bag Factory recognises the huge disruption to the lives and livelihoods of artists this year as a result of the Coronavirus, so we have decided to help support even more artists during this exceptionally difficult time. Another notable artist who impressed us with her perseverance and dedication to her artistic practice is Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, who has been selected as a runner-up and will receive a three-month studio bursary running from October to December 2020.
ABOUT THE RECIPIENTS
Cheriese Dilrajh (b. 1997, Kwa- Zulu Natal) completed a BA Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand (2015-2018). Her actual education is the streets. Her areas of interest include (but are not limited to) migration, complexity of meaning and the making of new meanings. Often it is tied to inherited history, the creation of imagination and confronting and disrupting violence. Through sensory, audio and visual, written, multitudinal forms and occupation she engages with intergenerational, inherited and created knowledges, and the distortion and formation of self through personalized narratives that are a becoming of herstory.
Hemali Khoosal is a multidisciplinary artist, socially engaged maker and researcher. She tends to work collaboratively, with much of her work based on conversations and interactions with people. Khoosal graduated cum laude from Wits School of Art and was runner-up for the Wits Young Artist Award (2019). She was also a recipient of the International Spoleto Award (2019), a nominee for the Video Art Awards in Italy (2019), and the winner of the Emerging Artist’s Portraiture Development Programme (2018). Her work has most recently appeared in screenings and exhibitions in Johannesburg, Grahamstown and Cape Town (South Africa); Huye (Rwanda); Bergamo and Rome (Italy); as well as Strasbourg (France). Additionally, she has work forming part of public and private collections, including: the Centro Luigi di Sarro, Rome, Italy; the Jack Ginsberg Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Keleketla! Library, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Lebogang Mogul Mabusela aka monotypebabe prides herself in being the director of and inventor for Makoti Technologies™, a Bridal outlet that sells guns, tools and technologies that roast patriarchy and enhance women's desires. Her practice extends to printmaking, where she uses dainty and gendered objects such as doilies to explore black femininity through the lens of being a killjoy. She often works in monotypes; watercolour painting; the book arts such as zines and other paper-based practices; performance and installation. Lebogang just completed a 2-month online residency with the BLVCK BLOCK. Now she is currently showing her guns in the Nonrepresentational group show online with Stevenson Gallery.
ABOUT THE BAG FACTORY
The Bag Factory is a non-profit contemporary visual art organisation in Newtown, Johannesburg. We provide studio space to a cross-generational community of Johannesburg based artists. We also host a prestigious international artist residency programme, artist development programmes including the David Koloane Award and Cassirer Welz Award, and regular exhibitions that showcase new work by emerging artists to the wider public. All our programmes are accompanied by a public programme that encourages greater understanding of contemporary visual art and stimulates interaction between artists and our audiences. We are affiliated with the international Triangle Network.
With a pioneering history of providing a supportive infrastructure for artists for three decades, the Bag Factory is unique in combining art making with cultural debate and art exhibitions, thereby creating a fertile international environment for experimentation, innovation and cultural dialogue between creatives in South Africa and the rest of the world.
