Zeitz MOCAA & University of the Western Cape (UWC) Welcome 2025 Museum Fellowship Cohort
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) and the University of the Western Cape (UWC) welcome six fellows from across the African continent to participate in the fourth year of the Zeitz MOCAA & UWC Museum Fellowship Programme. The pan-African museum fellowship programme encourages discourse around contemporary art, curatorial practice, art education, conservation, heritage and museology from Africa and the African diaspora.
This accomplished group of thinkers and practitioners is set to shape the future of curatorial practice and arts research across the African continent and beyond. We look forward to sharing their journey as they push boundaries and reimagine what art, history, and community can mean in the museum context!
Please welcome Arafa C. Hamadi (Tanzania/Kenya), Evyn Bileri Banawoye (Togo/USA), Keamogetse Mosienyane (Botswana), Deborah Olatunji (Nigeria/USA), Myles Tarentaal (South Africa), and Esinam Damalie (Ghana).
The programme endeavours to increase knowledge production around curatorial practice, arts administration and heritage management. It offers fellows exposure to museum practice facilitated by Zeitz MOCAA senior staff and is underpinned by academic rigour in art, heritage and museum scholarship facilitated by the University of the Western Cape’s Department of Historical Studies. Fellows study and work with both institutions towards an accredited BA Honours qualification.
Fellows will gain practical work experience at Zeitz MOCAA in the Curatorial, Registrar & Collection Management, Exhibition Design, Art Education, and Institutional Advancement departments. After an initial orientation and rotation period within the various departments starting 1 May 2025, each member of the cohort will get settled in their respective departments. They actively contribute to the research, planning, execution and management of Zeitz MOCAA projects, ranging from exhibitions, publishing and public programming to art education and fundraising.
Follow @zeitzmocaa on social media to track the journey of the 2025 Zeitz MOCAA & UWC Museum Fellows.
The 2025 Zeitz MOCAA & University of the Western Cape (UWC) Museum Fellowship Programme is generously supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Meet the 2025 Cohort
Arafa C. Hamadi (Tanzania/Kenya)
Arafa C. Hamadi is a Tanzanian multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Tanzania and Kenya. They hold a Master of Arts with Honours in Architecture, which they received in 2017 from the University of Edinburgh. Their work involves long-term practice-based research that develops through world-building in both digital and physical realms.
In the physical realm, they design festival sets and installation pieces, often monumental in scale and fantasy. Their digital work spans immersive VR spaces, digital worlds and moving images. Arafa’s practice explores queerness in relation to space and occupancy, centring on joy and tangible ways of connecting the East African queer community. They do this not only through their art but also by organising small-scale events, curating exhibitions, conducting research, and actively participating in the growing Ballroom scene in East Africa.
They have taken part in various residencies with Pro Helvetia (Switzerland), the National Arts Festival (South Africa), the Prince Claus Award (the Netherlands) and are currently part of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) & the University of the Western Cape (UWC) Fellowship Programme in Cape Town, South Africa. Their work has been featured in exhibitions across Mozambique, Tanzania, the USA, Canada, and online. In 2023, they held their first solo exhibition, [BODY], in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya.
An award-winning 3D/VR artist, they have been recognised by the Ministry of Arts in France. Their immersive VR experience, LETU: Frankie’s Story, premiered at the Sheffield DocFest in June 2024 and has since been shown in South Africa and Germany.
Since 2018, they have worked periodically as Art Director at the Beneath the Baobabs Festival in Kenya and are currently the co-director of ALTÆR, an alternative event space in Dar es Salaam that prioritises community and the safety of marginalised attendees. They are also part of the BUILT. Collective, which adapted and built a custom stage set for Nigerian artist Rema, in Nairobi.
Evyn Bileri Banawoye (Togo/USA)
Evyn Bileri Banawoye (b. 2001, US) is a Togolese American curator and interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. Their work spans Black subjectivity, Transnational narratives, Afro-diasporic histories and spiritualities, the body as site, and modern and contemporary art. They explore these themes through curation, writing, performance, photography, and ceramics.
Banawoye’s practice functions as an activation and congregation of artists across the African diaspora. Drawing on their background in sociology and philosophy, they challenge binary notions of existence by engaging with precolonial African knowledge systems. They have previously worked at the International Studio and Curatorial Program (NYC) and Picture Theory (NYC). In their curatorial debut, Mad Black Phantasms, Banawoye convened the works of emerging Black artists to explore Black subjectivity through the lens of madness.
Banawoye holds two BAs from New York University’s College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Global Public Health, majoring in Public Health and Sociology, with a minor in French and Philosophy.
Banawoye is currently a part of the 2025 cohort of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) and University of the Western Cape Fellowship Programme in Cape Town, South Africa, where they will be studying at the University of Western Cape and working at the Zeitz MOCAA.
Esinam Damalie (Ghana)
Esinam Damalie (b.1993) is a Ghanaian artist-curator based in Accra, Ghana. She holds a Fine Art, Painting and Sculpture degree from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. With eight years of practice and experience in the arts scene, Damalie possesses a profound desire to express herself creatively.
Throughout her career, she has actively participated in numerous significant exhibitions, showcasing her work and vision. Noteworthy among these are Cornfields in Accra (2016) and Orderly Disorderly (2017), both organised by blaxTARLINES KUMASI, a collective of which she is a member. In 2018, she achieved recognition in the Kuenyehia Trust for Contemporary Art shortlist exhibition, securing second runner-up for the Kuenyehia Prize for Contemporary Ghanaian Art, an annual art prize established in 2016.
From March 2019 to February 2024, Damalie served as General Manager and Workshop Coordinator at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, founded by renowned Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama. Her work with the centre enabled her to make significant contributions to the art world. Her involvement in two retrospective exhibitions, three group exhibitions, and her successful facilitation of art workshops underscores her commitment to nurturing emerging talent.
From July to August 2022, Damalie participated in documenta fifteen as an artist-in-residence under the program CAMP: notes on education in Kassel, Germany. This residency provided a platform for collaboration and exploration of education themes, fostering vibrant exchanges among artists, art educators, and researchers.
In 2023, Damalie was a guest artist at the Beyond Wishful Thinking Residency at Villa Romana, in Florence, Italy, which focused on communitarian living, intentional communities, and sustainable togetherness as spatial strategies for radical (feminist) politics.
In September 2023, she curated the second iteration of the travelling exhibition titled Dig Where You Stand, From Coast to Coast – Seke at the Palais de Lomé in Togo, organised by the African Artist Foundation in Lagos, Nigeria. Emphasising themes of restitution, reparation, and repatriation, the exhibition featured works by 20 African and African diaspora artists, highlighting the significance of community engagement in arts.
In December 2024, she curated a group exhibition titled For All of Us at the Foundation for Contemporary Art – Ghana inspired by Poetra Asantewa’s sophomore album — a genre-blending celebration of identity, connection, and becoming.
Damalie’s extensive artistic journey and deep engagement in the art community serve as a testament to her unwavering passion, dedication, and impactful contributions to contemporary art, both within Ghana and internationally.
Deborah Olatunji (Nigeria/USA)
Deborah Olatunji is a Nigerian American storyteller, writer, and curator based in Philadelphia. Her work, conveyed through poetry, podcasting, and photography, focuses on themes of motherhood, celebration, return, collective memory, and revolutionary dreaming. She is particularly interested in how transnational Black feminism connects women across borders through language, notions of power, and erased histories.
At age 17, Deborah wrote her first book, Unleashing Your Innovative Genius (2020), which reimagines public education to ignite curiosity in students of all ages and inspire personal growth. In that same year, she produced her first audio project called Voices of Disruption, a podcast on ‘finding glory in the mystery’, and navigating personal and cultural change. Throughout her career, Deborah has been a passionate advocate for accessible arts spaces and multimedia education, earning an Imagining America Joy of Giving Something Fellowship (2022) for her work in digital media, arts, and public service.
As a poet, her artistic pursuits have taken her to Carnegie Hall in New York, as well as stages across Cape Town and Philadelphia. While studying abroad for a semester at the University of Cape Town in 2023, she co-founded the Black Storytellers Collective, a transnational storytelling community that unites writers across Africa and the diaspora. Most recently, she curated her first exhibition, Bearing Witness—a travelling gallery that centres stories on the various threads of collective grief and radical love from Black artists.
Deborah’s professional experience spans design, communications, project management, event planning, and consulting, forming a foundation for a legacy of impactful engagement and intentional development globally. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with a focus on cultural intervention from the University of Pennsylvania.
Deborah is a recent recipient of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa and University of the Western Cape Fellowship. Through this programme, she hopes to further her journey as a researcher, curator, and community builder on the continent for the foreseeable future.
Myles Tarentaal (South Africa)
Myles Tarentaal is an emerging museum practitioner from Cape Town, South Africa, with a keen focus on heritage and South African history. His research explores the evolving role of museums in society, particularly their potential to foster community engagement and drive local development.
Myles previously interned at the Iziko Social History Centre, where he worked closely with curators and conservators on various projects—most notably contributing to the research and conceptualisation of the Nelson Mandela Drakenstein Prison House Museum at the The Drakenstein Correctional Centre (formerly Victor Verster Prison) site. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in History, Sociology, and Linguistics from the University of the Western Cape (UWC), graduating with academic distinction and multiple honours.
As a student assistant in the UWC Records Department, he was responsible for reassigning archival collections, conducting research, and managing institutional databases.
As a 2025 Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa and University of the Western Cape Fellow, he aims to transition his experience into the contemporary art space while further specialising in museum practice. Myles hopes to contribute to both academic research and museum practice throughout the fellowship and beyond, placing history, culture, and heritage at the forefront of his future projects.
Keamogetse Mosienyane (Botswana)
Keamogetse Mosienyane is a Motswana social-geographical researcher and emerging interdisciplinary curator and writer. Her research and writing are rooted in a Black imagination of space, through experimentation with placemaking practices from Southern Africa that explore structural questions embedded in spatial marginalisation processes.
She completed an MPhil at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, in 2024. She also holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada.
In 2024, she undertook a curatorial internship at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where she gained experience in curating within the architecture field and explored various research methodologies. In 2022, she participated as a writer with the pan-African art initiative Invisible Borders.
Mosienyane also contributes to Botswana-based collective Banana Club, providing curatorial and writing support for the Banana Club Artist Fund. She has written for Public Parking, a Manitoba-based online publication, and has contributed as a writer to Banana Club’s zine, Ta Pinda.
Mosienyane hopes to work collaboratively with artists and cultural workers across the continent and its diaspora in placemaking processes.
Photo credit: 2025 Zeitz MOCAA & University of the Western Cape (UWC) Museum Fellowship Cohort. Photos by Ramiie G, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.