Online Tierney Fellowship Workshops 2021

The annual Cape Town Tierney fellowship meetings, normally hosted at Michaelis, were shifted online because of the complexities around meeting in person during the COVID19 pandemic. UCT hosted the fellowship workshops in Zoom on the 18 and 19 of February. The Tierney Fellowship is a partnership between the University of Cape Town, the University of the Witwatersrand and Market Photo Workshops.

The fellows and mentors for 2020/ 2021 are Eugene van der Merwe (UCT Fellow) mentored by Svea Josephy and Dominique Edwards; Lusanda Ndita (MPW Fellow) mentored by Mary Sibande and Refilwe Nkomo; (Mentor) Bekie Ntini (Photo Workshop) Loyiso Oldjohn (Photo Workshop) and Boitumelo Motau (WITS Fellow) mentored by Natasha Christopher and Buyaphi Mdledle.

Zoom opened up possibilities to invite people from farther afield and so we were able to invite Adam Broomberg, a photographic artist based in Berlin, to the critiques. In addition, guests from the area of arts and culture were invited to give feedback into the projects. These included curators, artists and academics such as Patricia Hayes (UWC), Anna Steilau (NYC), Ashley Walters (SU) Jo Ractliffe and Ernestine White.

Part of the significance of the Tierney fellowship is that it grows every year, as part of the expectation is that previous fellows become mentors. The current fellows met with previous fellows in a Zoom party hosted by technical officer at UCT, Sitaara Stodel, a previous Tierney fellow.

Thank you to Matthew Tierney and the Tierney Fellowship Foundation and to all the artists and scholars who gave so generously of their time.