collaborators

M. Neelika Jayawardane is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York-Oswego, and a Research Associate at the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD), University of Johannesburg (South Africa). She is a recipient of the 2018 Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for a book project on the Afrapix, a South African photographers’ agency that operated during the last decade of apartheid. Jayawardane was born in Sri Lanka, raised in Zambia, and completed her university education in the US, where she currently works. Her scholarly publications focus on the nexus between South African literature, photography, and the transnational/transhistorical implications of colonialism and apartheid on the body. As a founding member of the digital project, Africa is a Country, she became increasingly interested in writing in a manner that is accessible and welcoming to a larger public. She recently contributed an essay for Aperture’s publication of South African “visual activist” Zanele Muholi’s self-portraits, and catalogue article for African Mobilities: This Is Not a Refugee Camp Exhibition at The Architekturmuseum der TU München, in Munich, Germany. She also wrote the introductory essay for the South Africa pavilion’s 57th Venice Biennale catalogue, an essay for The Walther Collection’s publication (2017), as well as numerous essays for artists’ catalogues. Along with academic publications, her writing is featured in Al Jazeera English, Transition, Aperture, Contemporary&, Contemporary Practices: Visual Art from the Middle East, and Even Magazine.