The Switzerland-based Kunsthalle Bern museum has appointed
Kabelo Malatsie as its next director. She will be the first non-European to don
this position.
Kabelo Malatsie is a prominent curator based in
Johannesburg. She is considered one of the most influential people in South
Africa’s art world from the last decade. From 2011-2016, she served as the
director of Stevenson Gallery. In 2018 she received her art history master’s
degree from the University of Witwatersrand.
“Translation encompasses the linguistic body
politics and ideas of the world that are yet to be creatively brought to the
fore,” said Malatsie in a statement. “I look forward to working with the team
at Kunsthalle Bern to continue experimenting on curatorial and artistic
practices.”
Considered one of the leading influencers of the
Johannesburg art world of the past decade, Malatsie was chosen from a pool of
more than 130 applicants from around the globe. She was acting director of the
Johannesburg- and Cape Town–based Stevenson Gallery from 2011 to 2016 before
obtaining her master’s degree in art history from the University of
Witwatersrand in 2018 and going on to serve as director of VANSA (Visual Arts
Network of Africa) through 2019. She has worked as a commissioning curator,
notably for Sabelo Mlangeni’s 2018 solo exhibition “Umlindelo wamaKholwa” at
Johannesburg’s Wits Art Museum, and has served as cocurator on numerous
exhibitions, among them 2018’s “In the Open or in Stealth” at the Museu d’Art
Contemporani de Barcelona and “Deliberation on Discursive Justice” at the 2020
Yokohama Triennale.
“The board and the selection committee were impressed not only by Kabelo Malatsie’s theoretical and curatorial approach, but also by her professional experience and knowledge of the international scene, and her manner of working in close collaboration with artists, finding varied and subtle ways to inspire them,” noted Kunsthalle Bern co-chair Florian Dombois in a statement.
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