ABOUT HEIDI SINCUBA
Thembeka Heidi Sincuba is an artist, educator, and writer whose work interrogates the intersections of African spirituality, ritual, and technology.
Sincuba’s forthcoming solo exhibition, Umngqwambo (2025), at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) in Cape Town demonstrates a transdisciplinary practice that spans painting, installation, and video. They have recently exhibited at Galerie 23 in Amsterdam (2023) and Berman Contemporary (2024). Notable residencies include the Nordic Arts Association (2021), where they collaborated with Lefifi Tladi on Afro Abstraction and African spirituality.
An educator with a critical pedagogy, Sincuba has lectured at Rhodes University, Wits, and the University of Cape Town. Their writings on African art, theory, and contemporary practices appear in publications such as Bubblegum Club, Mail & Guardian, and Chimurenga.
Sincuba is also an activist and vice-chair of the SWEAT (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce) board. They continue to push the boundaries of art, through artistic practice, academic engagements, and cultural discourse.
Umngqwambo
Umngqwambo explores the remnants of pre-colonial initiation rituals through oil painting, installation, and video. The work reimagines these rites of passage—such as coming-of-age, marriage, and spiritual awakening—as sites of tension, transformation, and resistance within the context of colonial modernity’s erasure.
The exhibition centres on two large-scale oil paintings, The Dance of Death and Bahlekisa Ngami, which confront the ruptured temporality and corporeal struggles inherent in initiation. Amanzi Angcwele, an installation combining water and plastic, symbolizes purification and regeneration, while the video Procession captures the ephemeral, spectral nature of the initiation experience.
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By reimagining initiation as both resistance and pedagogy, Sincuba invites viewers to reflect on the generative potential of fragmented traditions, where endings give rise to new beginnings. Umngqwambo will be on view at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) from January 16 to February 27, 2025.