Neelika Jayawardane

M. Neelika Jayawardane is Professor of English at the State University of New York-Oswego, and a Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class (RGC), University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She was born in Sri Lanka, raised in Zambia, and completed her university education in the US, where she currently works. Her research is centred on South Africa, and her scholarly publications focus on the nexus between written texts, visual art, photography, and the transnational / transhistorical implications of imperialism, ongoing forms of apartheid, discrimination, displacement, and migration on individuals and communities.

Jayawardane was a recipient of the 2018 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for a book project on Afrapix, a South African photographers’ agency that operated during the last decade of apartheid. She completed a critical writing residency at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in 2021, and received support from the Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for an interdisciplinary project examining photography from Sri Lanka’s civil war period, titled, “This is not the correct history.” In 2023, she was a writing fellow at The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS) at the University of Johannesburg.

At SUNY-Oswego, she regularly teaches classes that include writers who reflect on diaspora, migration, and displacement; contemporary African and South Asian literature; and postcolonial and transnational theory and criticism.

Class website: please see my Google class site

• Website: https://neelikajayawardane.com
• Research Associate, Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class (RGC), University of Johannesburg
  Research/Writing Fellow, Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), 2023
• Recent Publication: This is not the correct history (Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant)
• Projects: Photography, Power, and the Ethics of Representation
• Writing: Aperture, Art Review, Al Jazeera English, Transition, and other venues. 

Publications

Recent writing projects:

• “This is not the correct history”: Lacunae, Contested Narratives, and Evidentiary Images from Sri Lanka’s Civil War. Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. November 2022.
• Long-form critical essay in Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s first photobook, I Carry Her Photo with Me, MackBooks 2024 (May 2024).

Book chapters:

• “Institutional irresponsibility: How coverups at art institutions perpetuate gender-based violence.” Lesser Violence, Volume 1, ed. Amie Soudien. Johannesburg: MaThoko’s Books, 2022. pp. 141-169.

Criticism, essays, and reviews:

• “Lindokuhle Sobekwa’s powerful personal journey as a photographer in South Africa.” The Conversation. 31 August, 2023.
• Essay for Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi’s solo show at Stevenson Gallery, Amsterdam (November 2023). To be developed into a longer critical essay for a book project (2024).
• “Art and the Limits of ‘Awareness’ Politics: Reflections on Guantánamo, this year’s Berlin Biennale controversy, and the art world’s tendency for shallow political consciousness.” Art Review. 11 Nov. 2022.

Select Articles (Journalism):

•  “Sri Lanka’s ‘picturesque’ protests: There is something wrong with the international coverage of Sri Lanka’s ongoing protests demanding that the ruling Rajapaksa family leave office.” Al Jazeera English. Opinion. 2 Jun 2022.
• “Why British Vogue’s ‘celebration’ of the African model fell short: Fashion continues to trade in the white lie that it is inherently a non-racial practice and a business. Al Jazeera English. Opinion. 31 Jan 2022. (Co-authored with Rinaldo Walcott, Professor, Women and Gender Studies Institute at the University of Toronto.)
• “Diversity efforts in universities are nothing but façade painting: Even as the diversity and inclusion programmes proliferate, calls for more far-reaching structural change in universities remain unanswered.” Al Jazeera English. Opinion. 7 May 2021. (With Rinaldo Walcott.)
• “George Hallett: Nomad, raconteur and photographer who ‘became the camera.’” South African Mail & Guardian. 8 June 2020.
• “Anonymity is a necessary tool for India's #MeToo movement.” Al Jazeera English. Opinion. 14 Oct 2019.
• “Western media and depictions of death and injury to 'others.'” Al Jazeera English. Opinion. 22 Jan 2019.
• “The problem with photojournalism and Africa.” Al Jazeera English. Opinion. 18 January 2016.

Interdisciplinary research project:

• Photography, Power, and the Ethics of Representation: collaborative programming with the Department of English, The Institute for Global Engagement (IGE), and Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg
  • Session 1: Who gets to Picture, Narrate, Position? (30 Sept 2020)
  • Session 2: Imaged by History (29 Oct 2020)
  • Session 3: So much ‘Africa’ photography, so few African photographers (5 November 2021)

Conferences

Invited speaker:

• Afrapix Photographers: Working Class Photography that Revealed the Everyday Violence of Apartheid, from Natal’s Plantations to its Factories.” “Producing Knowledge in and of Africa.” Stanford Humanities Center Workshop, Stanford University. 12 October, 2023.
• “Rafiq Mayet’s images of factory workers, union meetings, and jazz clubs in Natal: a politically conscientized photographic practice in apartheid South Africa.” Cosmopolitan Visions, Imperial Projects: Prospects for a Global Technoscience. Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany. August 8-9, 2023.
• “Imagining freedom, constructing a politics of relationality on Natal’s ‘plantation’: the aesthetics of Afrapix photographers’ resistance photography”. Global Plantation Symposium. Department of African American Studies, Princeton University. 16 October 2020.
• “‘Inside the artery of political consciousness’: Khotso House, the Afrapix Photographers’ Collective, and the Synergies and Confluences that provided ‘a small and embattled community’ with a Practical Political Education”. Photography and Resistance Research Symposium. 29th – 30th January 2019. University of Brighton, United Kingdom.
• March 2018: “Revealing Self-Portraits: Reactions and Resistance to Zanele Muholi’s ‘Visual Activism’ in South Africa”. PANEL: “Portraits and Power: The Aesthetics of Resistance”. Black Portraitures Conference. Harvard University. March 23-24.
• August 2017: Art Council of the African Studies Association (ACASA) Triennial. “Photography as Travel Memoir: Itinerancy, Movement, and Subjectivity Formation in Contemporary African Photography.” Panel: “Africa’s Photographic Futures.” The University of Ghana, Legon (Accra).
• Moderated panel, What is the value of attention? With the artist, Ahmet Öğüt, and curator, Magdalena Malm. 12 July, 2023. UP Projects. The conversation focused on whether public art can offer a platform to channel our attention and affect change. (UP Projects is the UK’s leading public art organisation specialising in socially engaged public art commissioning.)

Invited Lecturer, Speaker, Panelist

• Mentor/Workshop Leader: Art Writing Work: New Engagements for Artists in East Africa. A collaborative project and a part of the ‘Networking Artists in East Africa’ programme. Partners include Nairobi Contemporary, British Council in East Africa, 32 Degrees East, Ugandan Arts Trust, Makerere University, and the British Council. Funded by Arts and Humanities Research Council and Global Challenges Research Fund (UK). 25th-April—1stMay; Nairobi, Kenya; Kampala, Uganda.
• Panel discussion organised:“South African artists Gabrielle Goliath & Simon Gush, in discussion with Neelika Jayawardane.” State University of New York-Oswego (SUNY-Oswego). 1stMarch, 2019.
• “Gabrielle Goliath, Simon Gush, Jaleel Campbell, in discussion with Neelika Jayawardane”. Syracuse University, Newhouse Centre for Global Engagement. “‘No Innocence This Side of the Womb’: Confronting Issues of Equality, Privilege, and Justice, From Syracuse and South Africa”. 28th February 2019.
• Invited speaker at the symposium:“‘Inside the artery of political consciousness’: Khotso House, the Afrapix Photographers’ Collective, and the Synergies and Confluences that provided 'a small and embattled community’ with a Practical Political Education”. Photography and Resistance Research symposium. 29th– 30th January 2019. University of Brighton.
• Invited speaker at the symposium:“‘The famous and the obscure were there, waiting for freedom’: Jeeva Rajgopaul’s photographs of South African Exiles in New York, 1991”. Conference: “Curatorial Care, Humanising Practices – Past Presences as Present Encounters”.VIAD, University of Johannesburg, 11-13 April 2018. 
• Public talk: in conversation with Paul Weinberg: On Common Ground: David Goldblatt & Peter MagubaneGoodman Gallery, Cape Town. 27 October 2019.
• Invited speaker at the opening of the exhibition: “The Body as a ‘Homing Device’: South African Artists and Performance”. Exhibition opening of Cairns Art Gallery, Queensland, Australia. Continental Drift: Black / Blak Art From South Africa and North Australia. Cairns Art Gallery, Cairns, Queensland, Australia. 10 July 2018. 
• Invited speaker at symposium/workshop: “Rafiq Mayet’s images of factory workers, union meetings, and jazz clubs in Natal: a politically conscientized photographic practice in apartheid South Africa.” Cosmopolitan Visions, Imperial Projects: Prospects for a Global Technoscience. Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany. August 8-9, 2023.

Other speaking engagements:

• “Contentious Remembering: The Afrapix photographers’ collective and agency.” 18 May 2023. The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg.
• “This is not the correct history.” Reading and conversation, with Cookie Jar editors Pradeep Dalal and Shiv Kotecha. Andy Warhol Arts Writers. 30 March 2023.

Awards and honors

Fellowships & grants (external):

• Writing Fellow, The Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study (JIAS), University of Johannesburg. 1 Feb – 31 May, 2023.
• Writer-in-Residence. Woodstock Artist/Writer-in-Residence programme, Woodstock Centre for Photography (CPW). Project: “The Afrapix Photographers’ Agency and Collective.” Woodstock, NY. 2021.
• Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Special Project Grant. Dec. 2020-ongoing in 2021. Long-form essay “‘This is not the correct history’: Lacunae, Contested Narratives, and Evidentiary Images from Sri Lanka’s Civil War” interweaves scholarship on visual work, critical analysis of photography, personal narrative, and photographs.
• Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for a book project (Jan. 2018 – Dec. 2018).

Fellowships & grants (internal):

• Scholarly and Creative Activity Grants (SCAC) Research Grant, SUNY-Oswego: “Durban’s Afrapix photographers: Forging relations in the detritus of Natal’s plantation culture” (Summer 2023).
• Scholarly and Creative Activity Grants (SCAC) Research Grant, SUNY-Oswego: “Documenting Apartheid Architecture and Design: Gille De Vlieg, Anna Ziemensky, and Deseni Moodliar-Soobben’s Photography” (Summer 2022).
• Scholarly and Creative Activity Grants (SCAC) Research Grant, SUNY-Oswego: “‘Comrades with Cameras’: The Afrapix Photographers’ Agency and the South African Anti-Apartheid Movement” (Summer 2017).

Performances and exhibitions

Invited reviewer/art critic & writer

• 2017 Venice Biennale. Venice, Italy. May 2017.
• Johannesburg Art Fair. Johannesburg, South Africa. September 2016.
• Rencontres de Bamako (Bamako Encounters), 10th Edition: “Telling Time”. Invited Arts Writer – Guest of curator Olabisi Silva. November 1-5, 2015.
• Sharjah Biennale. May 10-16, 2015. Invited Writer – Guest of Hoor Al-Qasimi, President of The Sharjah Art Foundation.

Workshop Leader:

• Critical Writing Workshop for Arts Writers. Sponsored by Contemporary And, a site for writing about contemporary art from Africa. Harare, Zimbabwe. Lecturer/Workshop Leader. Sept. 2017.
• Goethe-Institut Johannesburg’s Centres of Learning for Photography in Africa (CLPA) at Lagos Photo Festival. Critical skills workshop for photographers. Lagos, Nigeria. Workshop leader/lecturer. October 2016.

External Grants, Fellowships, Residencies (recent):

• Writer-in-Residence. Woodstock Artist/Writer-in-Residence programme, Woodstock Centre for Photography (CPW). Woodstock, NY. 2020.
• Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Special Grant. Dec. 2020-ongoing in 2021. The long-form essay I wrote, “‘This is not the correct history’: Lacunae, Contested Narratives, and Evidentiary Images from Sri Lanka’s Civil War,” interweaves scholarship on visual work, critical analysis of photography, personal narrative, and photographs.
• Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for a book project (Jan. 2018 – Dec. 2018).