Creator
M Neelika Jayawardane
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 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 research concentrates on South Africa, and her scholarly publications focus on the nexus between written texts, visual art, photography, and the transnational/transhistorical implications of colonialism, ongoing forms of discrimination, displacement, and migration on individuals and communities. She was a founding member of the online project, Africa is a Country. Along with academic publications, and catalogue essays for exhibitions and artists’ books, her writing is featured in Al Jazeera English, Transition, Aperture, frieze, C&, Even Magazine, Contemporary Practices and more.
George Hallett: Nomad, raconteur and photographer who ‘became the camera’
The renowned South African photographer understood how to look for the tucked-away spaces that were the sources of both light and dark
On photographs and the art of ‘remixing’ images
We explore the issues involved in artists’ reasonable or fair use of other people’s works
Art does not need another hero: Reflections on the 10th Berlin Biennale
This year’s Berlin Biennale gives audiences a glimpse into what a visionary art world might look like
‘From No Fixed Place’, a space appears
"Violence targeted at erasing the bodies of women tells us that their physical, emotional, and political and intellectual labour remains a threat".
The very American myth of ‘exceptional immigrants’
It is time for more privileged immigrants in the US to stop seeing themselves as more deserving than others.