Palesa Ngwenya is a Johannesburg-based emerging curator and visual storyteller whose work centres on Black South African stories, both personal and collective. With a deep interest in culture, spirituality, identity, memory, womanhood, and tradition, her practice is driven by the desire to make people feel seen. She is particularly fascinated by the duality of life and human beings,  how joy and grief, tradition and modernity, strength and vulnerability often coexist. She believes storytelling is a powerful way to hold this complexity and to spark healing, dialogue, and recognition.

Palesa curates with the intention of creating spaces that feel familiar, reflective, and emotionally resonant. She is drawn to quiet conversations and the intimate details of everyday life. Though still new to curating, she brings a strong sense of observation and concept development to her process, with a personal love for conceptual thinking. Her background in design and storytelling, along with her experience working at Latitudes, continues to inform and shape her curatorial perspective, deepening her understanding of artists, audiences, and the evolving art ecosystem. Her practice is rooted in care, attentiveness, and imagination as she grows into her own artistic and curatorial voice.