Jay Pather

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Jay Pather is a director, curator, choreographer and an academic. His work focuses on interdisciplinary performance, site specific and public art, decoloniality and social justice. He curates a Live Art Series for Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, is Artistic Director of the Afrovibes Festival in The Netherlands, co-curates Spier Light Art Festival in Cape Town and is Professor Emiritus at the University of Cape Town. As director of the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), he conceived and curated Infecting the City Public Art Festival and the ICA Live Art Festival in Cape Town. He has also co-curated the Season Africa 2020/21 in France, the International Theatre Festival, Brazil, and Spielart in Munich.

Recent theatre work include direction of three new plays by Nadia Davids:  Bridling, Hold Still and What Remains for which he won the Fleur du Cap Award for Directing. He created the mixed media surface tension on a Vila Albertine residency in New York.

Recent publications include Acts of Transgressions, Live Art in South Africa and Restless Infections, Public Art for a Transforming City, which he conceived and edited. A monograph, Jay Pather and Spatial Politics, by Professor Ketu Katrak was also recently published.

Pather served as International Chair, Paris 8 University; Fellow, University of London; Chair, International Award for Public Art; Chair, National Arts Festival, South Africa; Jury member, TURN Fonds, Germany and Fonds Podiumkunsten, Netherlands, serves on advisory boards for Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary, Sweden, and TURBA: The Journal for Global Practices in Live Arts Curation and recently named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.

Representative Archive of work at the Institute for Creative Arts, University of Cape Town