Paris Photo 2021

Mary Sibande was born in Barbeton, South Africa, in 1982. She currently lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. Sibande obtained an Honours degree from the University of Johannesburg in 2007 following a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Witwatersrand Technical College in Johannesburg in 2004. Notable awards include the 2017 Smithsonian National Museum of African Arts Award; the University of Johannesburg Alumni Dignitas Award in 2014 and the 2013 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts.

Sibande is also the recipient of several residencies, fellowships and tenures, including the 2018-2019 Virginia C. Gildersleeve Professorship at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York, USA; the MAC/VAL Musee d'Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne in Paris, France in 2013; the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) in Washington, D.C, USA in 2011 and the Cite des Arts International Residency in Paris, France in 2006.

Sibande has exhibited her work extensively within curated group shows and biennales. She has some upcoming features in West Bund Art & Design, with Bloom Galerie in Shanghai, China, as well as with Baverman Gallery at Paris Photo in Paris, France.

Other group shows include: Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting past and present and Present at Moody Centre for the Arts, Rice University in Houston, USA in 2020; Open Borders, the 14th Curitiba Biennale in Curitiba, Brazil; Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity at the Boston Museum of Fine Art; as well as Construction of the Possible, the Havana Biennale in Havana, Cuba, all in 2019; The Red Hour, Dak'Art: African Contemporary Art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal; African Mosaic: Selections from the Permanent Collection, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C, USA in 2017; the Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Lyon, France in 2013 and Desire, Narratives in Contemporary South African Art at the 54th Venice Biennale, as part of the South African Pavilion in Venice, Italy in 2011.

 In 2022, a solo exhibition of Sibande’s works will be presented by the Musée d’art Contemporain de Lyon in Lyon as well as an exhibition of new work at SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa. Earlier solo exhibitions include I came apart at the seams, at Somerset House in London, UK and Mary Sibande at the Leroy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University in New York City, USA, both in 2019; The Purple Shall Govern, a travelling exhibition presented at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival in Makhanda (formerly known as Grahamstown) in 2013, the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town in 2014, the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg in 2014 (all in South Africa) and the Musee Leon Dierx in Saint Denis, Reunion Island in 2014; Long Live the Dead Queen at the Musee d'Art Contemporain di Val- de-Marne in Paris, France in 2013; Mary Sibande and Sophie Ntombikayise Take Central Court at the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, USA in 2012.

Christopher Udemezue (b. Long Island, NY) received his BFA from Parsons School of Design in 2008. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries including the New Museum, Queens Museum of Art, MoMA, Bruce High Quality Foundation, and Envoy Enterprises. As the founder of the platform RAGGA NYC & CONNEK JA, he completed a residency with the New Museum "All The Threatened and Delicious Things Joining One Another" in June 2017. Also being the lead organizing member of the art collective House of Ladosha, Christopher has shown recently in the New Museum's "Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon" 40 year anniversary show and he was part of the chosen artists in The Shed’s Open Call grant program and exhibition that was on view in the new Hudson Yards Shed gallery, NYC in June. 2019. In 2021 he was elected to be Co-Chair of the board at Recess Gallery, Brooklyn NY. Udemezue lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Nevet Yitzhak (b. 1975, Israel; lives and works in Tel Aviv) is a graduate of the Naggar School of Photography, Media and New Music (2003); and the Advanced Studies in Fine Art at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (2007).

Her work has been shown at the 6th Asian Biennial, Taiwan; the 5th Mediation Biennale, Poznan, Poland; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland; Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel; Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin; the Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon; Mana Contemporary, Jersey City; National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts; SMBA, Amsterdam; Kuandu Museum, Taipei; Modern Art Research Institute, Kiev; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Museum for Islamic Art, Jerusalem; Herzlyia Museum of Contemporary Art; Petach Tikva Museum of Art; Eretz Israel Museum, Tel-Aviv; Koffler Center of the Arts, Toronto; Circle 1, Berlin; Galeria Labirynt, Lublin; Edel Assanti Gallery, London; 68 Square Meters, Copenhagen; Bandjoun Station, Cameroon; Jeanine Hofland Gallery, Amsterdam; TSR, Miami; Nimac Art Center, Nicosia; KOU Gallery, Rome; SIP Institute for Photography, Tel Aviv; Huashan Culture Park, Taipei and CCA, Tel- Aviv.

Yitzhak has been awarded the Visual Art Award, Israeli Ministry of Culture & Sport (2017); the Landau Fund Prize for Arts and Sciences (2014); Beatrice S. Kolliner Award for a Young Israeli Artist (Israel Museum, 2014); Shmuel Givon Prize (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2012); Creative Encouragement Award (Israel Ministry of Culture and Sport, 2012); Yehoshua Rabinovich Foundation for the Arts Grant (2008, 2010); First Prize, Experimental Film Competition, 21st International Film Festival, Jerusalem (2004); and was selected for Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Artist in Residence Program (2015- 2016) and ArtPort Artist in Residence Program (2013-2014).

Mousework is an uncanny and softly disturbing series of works that closely observes the crucial role photography played in the invention of the category “hysteria” and its perception in the medical and psychoanalytical fields. The suggestive works point to the controversial lens of Jean-Martin Charcot which evidently affected cultural myths of femininity, and spawned contemporary image banks saturated with stereotyped female characteristics and representations as such in what is still a male-dominated society. By desegregating and reassembling visual narratives into a comprehensive, sensitive body of works, digital ‘cabinets of curiosity’ in the form of photographic triptychs convey the artist's reflection on the notion of hysteria, authoritative power relations employed by technologies, the internet, and its clichéd algorithms, combined with a deep and intimate sense of the female gaze. Thus Azoulay reconstructs histories outside of their dominant context and mainstream discourse.

Ilit Azoulay was born in 1972, Tel Aviv. She lives and works in Berlin.

Azoulay’s work has been exhibited extensively and internationally in galleries and museums including solo exhibitions at Blue Rider Gallery (2019, Tai Pei), Center for Contemporary Art Tel Aviv (2019), The Israel Museum (2017, Jerusalem), Braverman Gallery (2013, Tel-Aviv), Kunst Werke (2014, Berlin), Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (2014, Herzliya), and Andrea Meislin Gallery New York). In 2014 she was nominated by Quentin Bajac and received the Rencontres d'Arles Discovery Award (2014, Arles).

The artist has taken part in group exhibitions in established galleries as well as museums such as Bauhaus Deassau (2019) , Ashdod Art Museum (2019), The Israel Museum (2017, 2011, Jerusalem), Pinakothek der Modern (2016, Munich), The Museum of Modern Art (2015, New York), Musee d'Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (2015, Paris), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (2015, Melbourne), Braverman Gallery (2013, Tel-Aviv), Andrea Meislin Gallery (2013, New York), and Daimler Art Collection (2012, Berlin) among others.Azoulay is the recipient of several awards among them the Constantiner Photography Award for an Israeli Artist, Tel Aviv Museum of Art the Israeli Culture and Sports ministry prize (2011), Mifal ha-Pais Foundation Grant (2013) and was among the finalist of the Pictet prize for contemporary Photography (2015). Her works appear in numerous worldwide museum and private collections including The Museum of Modern Art in New York and Centre Pompidou Paris.

Recent publications include No Thing Dies (Mousse Publishing), Finally Without End, an artist monograph (Sternberg Press, Berlin), and Shifting Degrees of Certainty which was published following her exhibition at KW (Spector Books, Leipzig). Ilit holds a BFA (1998) and MFA (2010) from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem.