Dr. George Mahashe

Mahashe works around the field of photography and museums, particularly at the intersection of artistic practice/research, archives, and afterlives of anthropology. His research takes khelovedu as a central idea, drawing on its capacity to complicate ways of knowing, practicing, and encouraging trans-disciplinarity.

His current project manifests as the research platform ‘––defunct context’ which engages the synergy and collaboration between art, science, technology, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems. Mahashe’s latest Monograph ‘—defunct context: Ambivalence to important work’ (2023) explores the artist book and its assembly as a process of inscribing his archive of practice as a physical dreamscape. The book consolidates 15 years of work around photography and the camera obscura; the refiguring of an anthropology museum; the turn to indigenous knowledges systems to confirm and support contemporary scientific observations; as well as some collaborative exchanges with some peers.  His artistic practice seen in exhibitioner projects like ‘Pavilion Prototype II: U406’ engages photographies beyond representation, as well as installation as sites of participation and collaborative practice.

Dr Mahashe is based at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town where he is lead researcher on several practice and research projects. He convenes the Honour in Curatorship programme, as well as the Foundation of Arts programme. He teaches New Media, as well as on critical practices around the idea of the “new museum”.