Ka Zenzile was born in Lady Frere, Eastern Cape, in 1986. He received a MA Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2019. He won the Tollman Award for Visual Art in 2014, the Michaelis Prize in 2013 and was shortlisted for the inaugural Norval Sovereign African Art Prize in 2022. Ka Zenzile was among three artists selected for the South African Pavilion of the 2019 Venice Biennale, curated by Nomusa Makhubu and Nkule Mabaso under the title The Stronger We Become.

Mawande Ka Zenzile has presented nine solo exhibitions with Stevenson (2013- 24) as well as Uhambo Lukamoya at 31 Project, Paris (2023); Autobiography of Mawande Ka Zenzile: Iingcuka ezombethe iimfele zeegusha at VANSA, Cape Town (2011) and Crawling Nation at the AVA Gallery, Cape Town (2009). Group exhibitions include Africa Supernova, Kunsthal KAde, Amersfoort, the Netherlands (2023); Stevenson X Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong (2023); Matereality, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2020); Tell Freedom, 15 South Afri-can Artists at Kunsthal KAdE, Amsterdam (2018); Looking After Freedom at Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town (2017); I Love You Sugar Kane (2016) and Material Matters: New Art from Africa (2015) at the Institute of Contemporary Art Indian Ocean, Port Louis, Mauritius among others.

Ka Zenzile has completed residencies at Cité internationale des arts (2019); the Nafasi Art Space, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2014), and he was awarded a residency in Norway in 2008 as part of the Abazobi project organised by the Arkivet Foundation and the Robben Island Museum. Ka Zenzile has been a regular participant in academic conferences including Between the Lines, Michaelis School of Fine Art and Hochschule für Bildende Künste Braunschweig (2013); The Exuberant Project, Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts, University of Cape Town (2012) and Thinking Africa + Diaspora Differently at the Centre for African Studies, University of Cape Town (2011). Many of these projects have been accompanied by his performances.

Ka Zenzile is among the artists featured in Prime: Art’s Next Generation (2021), Phaidon’s anthology of ‘rising stars in contemporary art’.

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