A look at the bnpa foundation's winners
The BNAP Foundation, an NPO that’s an incubator for emerging artists in South Africa, continues to carve out an important space for cultural upliftment and artistic advocacy. Alongside various workshops for business and creative development, its annual Visual Art Awards supports creative excellence and contributes to a broader, more inclusive cultural landscape. Looking back at the previous winners offers a portrait of young South African talent making standout and often deeply personal work.
Each year since 2017, the prize has amplified emerging voices from across the country, offering not just recognition, but residencies, mentorships, and exhibition opportunities. This year’s Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize Award winner, Khanyisa Agnes Brancon, is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring mediums of expression namely printmaking, photography, and installation through an interdisciplinary approach that consists of the use of textiles, thus prioritising materiality throughout her work. Another winner from this year’s awards ceremony was Nathaniel Sheppard, who won the JSE Acquisition Prize. Sheppard is a painter and master printmaker based in Johannesburg. His artistic practice is deeply rooted in examining the consumption and retelling of histories through storytelling.
From introspective visual storytelling to speculative futurisms, winners of the BNAP have gone on to become some of the most distinctive contributors to South Africa’s creative landscape. With the new winners announced, we decided to take a look back at the previous winners and what their practices entail.
2024 | Keabetswe Seema
The latest recipient, Keabetswe Seema ushers viewers into a world where afro-futurism and spiritual memory collide. A graduate of the University of Pretoria, Seema’s work places the black female form at the centre of cosmic inquiry, blurring fact with fable.Her practice, laced with references to family archives and identity politics, gestures to a future steeped in the past, where the body becomes both map and myth.
2024 | Tshepo Bopape — DALRO Visual Arts Merit Award Winner
Also recognised this year with the DALRO Visual Arts Merit Award, Tshepo Bopape draws on indigenous knowledge systems and spiritual inquiry to shape a practice as profound as it is probing. His bold, cubist-influenced style signals a new chapter in African spirituality rendered through contemporary art.
2023 | Tshepo Sizwe Phokojoe
2023’s BNAP winner, Tshepo Phokojoe, transformed hessian cloth into vessels of memory in his tactile show ‘Woven Comforts.’ Through nest and womb-like structures, he explored ideas of home, safety, and black intimacy.
2022 | Boitumelo Motau
Boitumelo Motau, the 2022 winner, crafts narrative-rich work that interrogates Johannesburg’s layered history. From gold rush migrations to contemporary diasporas, his multimedia approach —combining drawing, video, and installation— examines the emotional and physical imprints of displacement in the urban landscape.
2021 | Montshiwa Brian
Brian Montshiwa, a performer, choreographer, and visual artist, brought a genre-defying approach to the 2021 edition. Through performance, installation, and text-based work, Montshiwa’s practice unearths silenced narratives and queers the archive. Their show ‘A Different Kind of Inheritance and a Different Kind of Inhabitance’ at Everard Read proved their agility in weaving personal and political histories.
2019 | Melody “Mel” Madiba
Mel Madiba, the 2019 winner, channels fire as a medium and metaphor. Through pyrography on wood, she crafts portraits that honour black women’s divinity and complexity, with influences ranging from Zanele Muholi to Lina Iris Viktor.
2018 | Simphiwe Buthelezi
Emerging from the Assemblage Studios peer mentorship programme, Simphiwe Buthelezi used her 2018 BNAP win as a springboard to a growing practice in Cape Town. Her work continues to grapple with the intersections of visibility and artistic development.
2017 | Tendai Mupita
The prize’s inaugural winner, Sarungano (Tendai Mupita), has since gone on to international acclaim, with a recent MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and exhibitions in Rome, Detroit, and Harare. His work, grounded in Shona traditions and diasporic narratives, was a powerful indication of the prize’s ability to spot visionary talent early.
More than accolades, what binds them is a commitment to telling complex South African stories from within — and with purpose. As the foundation’s alumni grow in visibility and stature, their collective presence is reshaping the art world’s imagination of who gets to be seen, and on what terms.
