Simphiwe Ndzube
2026
We are excited to announce that Simphiwe Ndzube received the Thami Mnyele Foundation residency award and will stay in Amsterdam for 2 months. He was selected in collaboration with Joost Bosland and Noëlle de Haan from Stevenson Gallery Amsterdam, Bart Luirink, and Sean Fitzpatrick from ZAM Magazine. During his residency in Amsterdam, Simphiwe will focus on his research on antiapartheid history and artist movements in South Africa.
Simphiwe Ndzube was born in Johannesburg, and lives in Los Angeles. His practice consists of painting, collage, performance, sound, and sculptural forms that explore the nuances of freedom and agency. Inspired by history, remembering/retelling, language, and music, Ndzube creates worlds of characters and bursting landscapes that challenge the idea of the individual and the nation.
He has a BA Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. Oracles of the Pink Universe, the artist's first institutional solo exhibition in the United States, took place at the Denver Art Museum in 2021. Previous solo exhibitions have taken place at Museo Kaluz (2019); CC Foundation, Shanghai (2018) alongside Nicodim Gallery (2017-2022), Blum (2023) and Stevenson (2019-2025).
Installation View, The Fantastic Ride to Gwadana, Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, 2021
Notable group exhibitions include Personal Stories / Political Realities, Collections of Lyon and Belgrade's contemporary art museums, France (2025); Ba’zinzile: A Rehearsal For Breathing, the second Stellenbosch Triennale, South Africa (2025); Singular Views: 25 Artists, Rubell Museum, Washington DC, USA (2023); Africa Supernova, Kunsthal KAde, Amersfoort, the Netherlands(2023); Boil, Toil and Trouble, Art in Common, Los Angeles USA (2023); Pacific Gold, California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art, USA (2023); Abrasive Paradise, Kunsthal KAde, Amersfoort (2022); In Some Form or Fashion, The Momentary, Arkansas (2021); Lineages: Works from the Collection, NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale (2021); Shattered Glass, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2021); Witness: Afro Perspectives from the Jorge M Pérez Collection, El Espacio 23, Miami (2020); A Fair Share of Utopia, Nest, the Netherlands (2020); Là où les eaux se mêlent (where water comes together with other water), the 15th Lyon Biennale (2019); Open Borders the 14th Curitiba International Biennial, Brazil (2019); People at Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles (2019); New Acquisitions, Rubell Family Collection, Miami (2019); Hacer Noche (Crossing Night) in Oaxaca, Mexico (2018); The Eye Sees Not Itself, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (2017); Hierophant, Nicodim Gallery, Bucharest (2017); Women's Work, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2016); Our Lady, Iziko South African National Gallery (2016); The Art of Disruptions, Iziko South African National Gallery (2016).
Simphiwe has completed residencies at Dalton Warehouse Studios, South Central, Los Angeles (2018) and Greatmore Studios, Woodstock Cape Town (2016). He is the recipient of the Culture Creators 'Innovators & Leaders' Award in Art (2019), the Tollman Award for Visual Art (2016), the Michaelis Prize (2015), the Simon Gerson Prize (2015) and the Cecil Skotnes Scholarship (2013) at UCT.