Refilwe Nkomo is a Johannesburg based social practice storyteller, artist, curator and educator creating cultural and artistic interventions, programs and installations using various mediums including performance, video and text at the intersection of arts and social justice. Her research and performance have been the recipient of numerous awards and presented in South Africa, South Korea, Ghana, Botswana, Brazil, Germany, the United States of America and Zimbabwe. She has founded and co-founded organizations and platforms including We Are Here (WAH), a non-profit organisation working with men and boys to dismantle gender based violence, Izindlovu Collective which uses arts for social and transformative change and Alternative Processing, a collective which uses photography as a means of engaging social issues.
She holds a MA in Arts and Politics from New York University (Tisch School of the Arts|Art and Public Policy) where she developed the critically acclaimed choreopoem, Songs for Khwezi.
Palesa, a dynamic and driven art curator with over five years of curatorial experience. She made history as the first independent curator to present an exhibition at the South African State Theatre, and she also curated the first contemporary art exhibition at Vodacom’s VodaWorld headquarters.
Palesa’s journey into the art world began during her fashion studies at LISOF College, where her exposure to the work of Jane Alexander inspired a shift in focus from fashion to fine art, she quickly gained hands-on experience as a gallery assistant at respected Johannesburg institutions including The Gavin Project, Everard Read/CIRCA, and Lizamore & Associates. Now with 10 years of experience working across the art ecosystem — from artists to galleries and art fairs — Palesa has developed a distinct curatorial voice. She is also a published writer, contributing an essay on the digital globalisation of art to the Meta-Foundation’s book The Problem With African Contemporary Art Is…?