Bonolo Kavula
b. 1992, Kimberly, South Africa.
Bonolo Kavula is an artist who lives and works in Cape Town. Her practice explores the language
of printmaking beyond its traditional confines through her use of thread and punched Shweshwe
fabric as an exercise of abstraction. Combining print, design, painting and sculpture, she creates
works which are both dynamic and restrained in composition, using the repetition of tiny fabric
cut-outs, tenuously connected by individual threads, she recreates the canvas with new, more
intricate planes. Although the work is formalist in nature, the materials speak back to ideas of
colonialism, family and shared histories.
Kavula obtained a BA(FA) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town in
2014, majoring in Printmaking. Kavula received the 2014 Katrine Harries Print Cabinet Award at
the University of Cape Town. Her works are included in the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM)
Collection in Miami, USA, and the Iziko South African National Gallery Collection in Cape Town,
South Africa.
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