Biography

Xoliswa Ngwenya is a visual artist, photographer, and archivist from Johannesburg, South Africa. He was born in 1990 in Soweto. He is a Market Photo Workshop alumni and a current Unisa student doing a Bachelor of Arts.

He was a runner-up for the Tierney Fellowship in 2015. He is the 2016 1st prize recipient of the Social Justice Photography Competition through the Open Society Foundation for South Africa and was the main exhibitor at the Through the Lens exhibition in Cape Town in 2016. He was a featured artist sponsored by Vodacom Business in the IT Web, Brainstorm Magazine, calendar exhibition, 2017. 

In 2018, he was shortlisted for the DemocraSEE 3 photography award and was part of the RMB Talent Unlocked artist career development program and mentorship through Assemblage and VANSA, both sponsored by RMB. He also exhibited at Turbine Art Fair 2018. He was also nominated for the MAST Foundation for Photography Grant in 2018. In 2019, he was shortlisted for the Magnum Foundation Fellowship, and he was also shortlisted for the CAP Prize. He was part of the first African photography auction facilitated by the Photography Legacy Project and Aspire Art Auction in 2020. His work has been featured in various publications in South Africa. He has facilitated a training and learning program at the University of Johanneburg, Wits University, and Baileys African Historical Archives, teaching digital curation and digitisation of historical records and archives. He has worked on David Goldblatt's and Ruth Motau's archives, as well as Enerst Cole’s archive, which later reissued the House of Bondage book at Wits University through the Photography Legacy Project, and is currently working on the Drum Magazine Archive stored at Baileys African Historical Archives.

The passing of Ngwenya’s mother when he was nine years old strongly influences his work as he explores themes of absence, abandonment, belonging, nostalgia, township, the concept of home, identity, and gender roles, just to name a few. He is well known for his photography, which has a social and political commentary. His love for humanity and interest in human behaviour and psychology have prompted him to major in anthropology and records and archives management, which manifests itself in his photography.

Ngwenya was recently shortlisted for the 2024 CAP Prize and an Ilford Community Award.