Langa was born in 1975 in Bakenberg, Limpopo, and lives in Amsterdam. He studied at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam during 1997-98.

Rising to international prominence in the late 1990s, he was an active participant in what is now considered the golden age of biennales; including those of Johannesburg (1997), Istanbul (1997), Havana (1997), São Paulo (1998 and 2010), Gwangju (2000), Venice (2003 and 2009) and Lyon (2011).

Langa presented Omweg at KM21 in association with the Kunstmuseum, Den Haag in 2022. Previous solo exhibitions have taken place at institutions including Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam (1998); Centre d'Art Contemporain in Geneva (1999); the Renaissance Society in Chicago (1999); the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati (2003); Kunstverein Dusseldorf (2004); the National Museum of the 21st Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome (2005); Modern Art Oxford (2007); Kunsthalle Bern (2011); Krannert Art Museum in Champaign, Illinois (2013); and the ifa Galleries in Stuttgart and Berlin (2014); Chapel of the Cordeliers, Toulouse (2021); as well as Stevenson (2016-23). 

Langa was included in the seminal group exhibitions The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (touring 2001-2); Black President: The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, New Museum, New York (touring 2003-4); How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (touring 2003-5); A Fiction of Authenticity, Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis (touring 2003-6); Looking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora, Museum for African Art, New York (touring 2003-6); Africa Remix, Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (touring 2004-7); Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, International Center of Photography, New York (touring 2006-8), Flow, The Studio Museum, Harlem, New York (2008); The Global Contemporary. Art Worlds after 1989, ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (2011) and KRASJ 2, Ninove, Belgium (2014). More recently he has shown in Sowing Watermelon Seeds at Lagos, Nigeria (2024); Arte Povera and South African Art: In Conversation at Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg (2023); You to Me, Me to You at A4 Arts Foundation, Cape Town (2023); The Show is Over at South London Gallery, UK (2022); A Clearing in the Forest at Tate Modern, UK (2022); Globalisto. A Philosophy in Flux at Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne Métropole (2022); Witness: Afro Perspectives from the Jorge M Pérez Collection at El Espacio 23, Miami (2020); Mapping Worlds, Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2019); Crossing Night: Regional Identities X Global Context, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (2019); Material Insanity at Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Marrakech (2019); We Don’t Need Another Hero at 10^th Berlin Biennale (2018); The Read Hour at 13^th Dakar Biennale (2018); Afrique Capitales which spread across La Vilette and Paris, France (2017) as well as Art/Afrique, le nouvel atelier at  Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris (2017).

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