Meet Bulumko Mbete, the 2023 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award winner

Arts and Creative Industries

Bulumko Mbete is the 2023 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award winner!

An ode to Gerard Sekoto’s practice and prowess, the Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award, a partnership between the French Institute of South Africa, SANAVA and Absa, is awarded to a promising South African visual artist every year. Ongoing since 2003, this partnership demonstrates a successful synergy between the public and private sector in the name of celebrating visual art.

Investigating materiality, Mbete uses textile, beading and weaving to communicate generational gestures of love. As a part of the Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto Award prize, Mbete will leave South Africa for a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts de Paris. The South African National Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA) will cover Mbete’s accommodation and residency studio while the French Institute of South Africa’s support will cover her stipend as well as a return flight.

A bridge connecting South Africa and France, Sekoto’s time in France carried creative conversations forward beyond his time. Through more creative collaborations, exchanges and partnerships like this, the conversation between the two regions remains vibrant and meaningful in a way that we hope to see even in generations to come.

We look forward to Mbete’s contribution in the coming year.

You might also like

SA journalist Mihlali Ntsabo reflects on ENS Louis-Lumiere audio summer programme in France

South African journalist, Mihlali Ntsabo, represented the country at the 2024 ENS Louis-Lumière International Sound Documentary Summer Programme in...

DELF DALF

What are Delf and Dalf? DELF (Diplôme d’Etudes en Langue Française) and  DALF (Diplôme Approfondi de Langue Française) are...

Enhancing Social Action”: the Civil Society Development Fund’s workshop

On the 9 and 10 October 2018, the Embassy of France organised in Pretoria a workshop “Enhancing Social Action:...

Watching the infinitely small

First histological observations of Little Foot’s skull Discovered in the Silberberg Cave (Sterkfontein), South Africa, “Little Foot” is the...

Let's get social

This message is only visible to admins.
Problem displaying Facebook posts.
Click to show error
Error: Server configuration issue
Twitter feed is not available at the moment.