Zingisa Nkosinkulu is a visual artist (painter), art historian, and curator whose areas of study and practice include contemporary African art, black radical tradition, decolonial aesthesis, Hip Hop and Free Jazz, graffiti/street art, decolonial epistemic perspective, Xhosa indigenous culture and art, and black existentialism. He is especially concerned with the depiction of the black lived experience and its social formation in black creative expression practices, in particular, as well as the relation between art and history. He is preoccupied with the questions: how art makes us read history anew and what does art history tell us about the history in relation to the existential question of the Africana subject.
Nkosinkulu is interested in the relation between decolonial thought and black existential art and has been preoccupied with fusing these fields to illuminate the power of their synergy. He addresses these concerns by way of art-making, art exhibitions and criticism with special focus on Mary Sibande’s visual artworks, Fanonian discourse, Jean Michel Basquiat, Tupac Shakur, and Édouard Glissant. He is determined to contribute to the decolonisation of art history by deconstructing and decolonising aesthetics. Nkosinkulu was born in Eastern Cape, South Africa, he is currently a lecturer of Art History in the Department of Art and Music at UNISA, School of Arts where he is also enrolled for his Ph.D. in Art.
Nkosinkulu believes he has a calling to use art and decolonial thought as a mediator to transcend beyond the living conditions and colonial legacies in South African and the rest of the world. As the founder of Art Curate Afrika (ACA), with experience in Visual Art and Project Management since 2007, he has held four solo exhibitions of which he self-curated at the Grahamstown Arts Festival and one at Unisa Art Gallery, Pretoria. Nkosinkulu’s mission is to use decolonial art, Xhosa tradition and writing to bring new hope, share creative ideas and encourage people to be artistic, educated and conscious individuals.