Biography
Wezile Harmans is an Art Practitioner and Researcher who leverages the mediums of performance, video, installation, and mixed media to highlight issues pertaining to social justice inequalities. Harmans’ practice is a witness to the act of creation, materialized through observation of welcoming and unwelcoming spaces.
Wezile is a 2026 Social Impact Art Prize Fellow, and his International projects include a video performance with LEAD Project and LSE Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa (London), an M1/M2 highway billboard feature by The Centre for the Less Good Idea (Johannesburg), and a film by human rights defender Hub Artivism and the University of York (CAHR) (UK), and a commission from Art Rights Truth (UK). Harmans’ project 'Umdiyadiya' received the 2022 Best Visual Art Award in Creative Collection by the National Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, and he was the David Koloane Award recipient in 2019 and Prince Claus Fund Building Beyond Award recipient in 2022.
His performance work has been showcased at Iziko South African National Gallery, Norval Foundation in South Africa, and he has participated in several international residencies, including SIRA residency (Madagascar), Griffin Art Projects Residency (Canada), PACT Zollverein, Frankfurt Lab in Germany, IASPIS residency in Stockholm, Sweden, and BLACKROCK Senegal.
Synopsis
21748 and More is a performance work by Wezile Harmans that critically engages with the legacy of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Drawing from archival records of over 21,748 documented victims, alongside countless unnamed and unacknowledged lives. The work confronts the gaps, silences, and unresolved questions surrounding South Africa's process of reconciliation.
Set within a courtroom-like environment, the performer assumes the role of both witness and subject, compelled to present a case through the repetitive act of naming. As he recites the names of victims, his body and voice move through states of anxiety, strain, and determination.
The performance becomes a physical and emotional negotiation with memory, visibility, and erasure. Through endurance, repetition, and fragmentation, 21748 and More becomes a call to remember differently, foregrounding the dignity of victims while questioning the structures that once claimed to represent them.
