Pauline Buhlebenkosi Ndhlovu

Ndhlovu is a visual anthropologist, curator, editor and writer, who lives in Windhoek, Namibia. Her work focuses primarily on exploring the interconnected affective registers associated with sensory experience. Through her writing and occasional image-making, she explores how words, images, sounds and silences articulate different kinds of knowledge. Thematically, Ndhlovu’s work explores black representation and black interiority, focusing specifically on the ways land, migration, memory, healing and time cut across. In November 2022, she participated in the Invisible Borders ‘Whispers from the Wilderness’ Trans-African road trip around the Okavango Delta. Throughout the border crossings between Botswana and Namibia, she took the time to consider the onboarding of the senses she experienced for the duration of the trip. She is the winner of the inaugural Bank Windhoek Doek! Literary Awards Poetry Prize. In 2022, as a Chevening Scholar, she obtained a Master’s in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester. Ndhlovu recently completed the Zeitz MOCAA & University of the Western Cape Museum (UWC) Fellowship, where she learnt about curatorial practice, collections management, and contemporary scholarship on art discourse from the continent and its diaspora. She is currently the editor of Waithood Magazine. Ndhlovu’s current focus for the ARAK Fellowship is on the Namibian art scene, and has seen her engaging with the work of various Namibian artists in the ARAK Collection.

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