Meet the 3 South African Recipients of the 2023 Prince Claus Fund Seed Awards

The 3 South African creatives who made the list for the Prince Claus Fund Seed Award for 2023 are Chase Rhys, Gugulethu Duma, and ANDYMKOSI.

Nov 14, 2023

The 100 recipients of the 2023 Seed Awards of the Prince Claus Fund were recently announced. The list revealed that 32 of the 100 recipients from Africa are spread across 20 countries. Per the list, 3 of the 32 African recipients are from South Africa, one of the continent’s art and design capitals. South Africa alongside Nigeria and Ghana made up about 28% of the recipients from Africa with 3 recipients each.

Presented annually, the Seed Awards offer recognition and financial support of 5,000 euros for recipients to use at their own discretion. They allow emerging artists to explore new perspectives and develop their practice on their own terms while providing access to an inspiring international network and were made partially possible by the British Council and the Ing Yoe Tan Fund.

According to the announcement, the 100 recipients were selected from a pool of 1889 applicants from countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe.

Meet the 3 South African recipients of the 2023 Seed Awards

The 3 South African creatives who made the list for the Prince Claus Fund Seed Award for 2023 are Chase Rhys, Gugulethu Duma, and ANDYMKOSI.

Chase Rhys

Chase Rhys is a novelist, columnist, playwright, and screenwriter based in South Africa. Chase writes in Kaaps (or Afrikaaps)—Afrikaans as spoken by people of colour in South Africa, more specifically Cape Town (Kaapstad). People who speak the language are not represented or are typically relentlessly misrepresented, and by writing about their community, in the language that they speak, Chase is pioneering a new reading culture in people whose authentic stories have been erased and ignored in literature.

Chase's debut novel, “Kinnes”, won the 2019 K. Sello Duiker Prize at the South African Literary Awards and the kykNET-Rapport Prize. Their second book, “Misfit”, is a compilation of new and reworked stories from their biweekly column in Rapport newspaper and Netwerk24. Set on the Cape Flats in South Africa, the columns are written from Chase's perspective as an autistic, queer, post-binary misfit. Chase was also on the first all-Kaaps television writing team to create the 13-part dramatic mini-series, “Skemerdans”, for Showmax and kykNET.

Gugulethu Duma

Dumama | Image Source: Dumama’s Instagram

Gugulethu Duma also known as Dumama is a nomadic future folk musician, performer, and sonic researcher based in South Africa. As a storyteller and lyricist, Dumama weaves together childhood songs, stories, and personal memories with electronic hues and gestures. She experiments with the divide between traditional oral culture and futuristic, globally-oriented poetics in her embodiment of an African technological consciousness. Her sonic research involves consciously deconstructing and reconstructing archaic modes of representation of (Southern) African sonic and performance culture while activating audiences in her interactive performances.

Dumama’s work has been presented at various cultural institutions and festivals, such as SAVVY Contemporary, Gropius Bau, Humboldt Forum, Boiler Room x Total Refreshment Center, Berghain Kantine, and many others. She has been an artist in residence with the Solo Magic Radical Black Femme Project, One Beat Music, Goethe.

ANDYMKOSI

ANDYMKOSI is a creative entrepreneur, multidisciplinary artist, and cultural practitioner based in South Africa. ANDYMKOSI's work is an extension of the reflexive exploration of the world around her, a way of understanding her own lived experience as a Black woman. The departure point for her practice is aspiring to make the Black queer human experience better. As a cultural practitioner, her work centers on themes of gender, space, and people.

In 2019, ANDYMKOSI founded the award-winning podcast, This Audio is Visual speaking with visual artists and photographers in South Africa and across the diaspora about their creative journey; both a masterclass and blueprint archive for new image makers

Past recipients from South Africa include Ling Sheperd, Athandiwe Ntshinga, Lee Mokobe, Kofi Maqhawe Dotsey, DORMANTYOUTH, and Motlhoki, Mikal the Muezzin