Past Student Achievements

Below you can find all sorts of news regarding exhibitions and achievements of our past students/alumni.

If you are an alumnus of the Department and have any news or information which you believe would be of interest to our current students, please click here to inform us.

The staff and students of DoVA congratulate Neo Matloga who was awarded the Royal Prize for Free Painting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands recently.

For the original article (in Dutch) see here and for a video of the awards, see here

The DoVA congratulates Richard Specs Ndimande (BTech Fine Art 2017) who has been awarded the 2017 Cassirer Welz Award. He follows Nomphumelelo Ngoma (graduated 2013) who won the award in 2016. At the award evening, held at Strauss & Co, Specs won a residency at the Bag Factory with access to their community of artists as well as an exhibition at at Everard Read Gallery, in March 2018, at the end of the residency. Read more here and the SA Art Times article here.

Masters student Kiveshan Thumbiran received 1st place in the recent Excellence in Higher Education 2017 awards, hosted by iStore and ThinkAhead. Jives’s entry consisted of course material for the new Digital Media I module of the BAVA 1st year program which he has developed. The judges stated that:

He has taken a ‘Computer Course’ for media students, which was really a ‘teach about technology’ course, and transformed that into a ‘New Media Studies’ course, in which he uses technology in an innovative way to teach art. He changed the course not only in terms of content, but also in the way that teaching is now done through technology. And, as a by-product, the students are learning how to use different computer applications. In this way he satisfies the demands of the original course, but enriches it significantly by broadening the experience of the students. While technology is used extensively to present the course, the focus is not on technology but on the learning content … which is exactly how technology should be used in education.

DoVA is hugely proud of you Jives and this award acknowledges the great work you have done on developing the 1st year Digital Media curriculum!

DoVA’s squash star Alexa Pienaar (NDip: Fine Art 2017) received the top accolade when the UJ Sports Awards Gala function was held at the Johannesburg Country Club on Thursday, 12 October 2017. It was a night to remember for Alexa, who was crowned Sportswoman of the Year and took home the Student-Athlete Award for Excelling in Sport and Academics. Alexa helped the UJ squash team win their sixth title in a row at the annual University Sport South Africa (USSA) tournament. She represented the USSA team at the World University Championships in Malaysia, where they earned the bronze medal. This year’s SA Open saw her produce one of her best performances when she finished third, while she played at number two for the SA Country Districts team in the A section of the Kaplan Cup interprovincial in July. Alexa also won the Hyundai Award at the interprovincial tournament for the “player who portrays the face of the future of SA squash”. In the student-athlete category, which combines academic marks and sporting achievement: Alexa was the Department’s highest achieving student with distinctions in three of her 3rd year modules. The entire Department congratulates you on this fantastic achievement, Alexa!
Read more here and here

The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC, USA will hold its second annual African Art Awards dinner on 27 October 2017 where Alice Walton, Ghada Amer and Mary Sibande are honorees. We at DoVA are extremely proud of your achievement Mary!
Read more about the event here

Mary Sibande, Lawrence Lemaoana (both graduated 2007) and Lebohang Kganye (graduated 2016) are three of the South African representatives at this year’s 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London during October 2017.

Neo Matloga (graduated 2014) appears on Starting Points after showing on the 2016 FNB Art Fair

Neo is also on the cover of SA Art Times for September 2016

Click on the image below to read Afripolitan – Neo Matloga, by Ashraf Jamal on p12

Mary Sibanda won the Prestigious 2014 UJ Dignitas Award along with Judge Ronnie Bosielo and Clifford Ross CEO of Town Lodge. Congratulations Mary, we are incredibly proud of you as one of the youngest recipients of this fine award.