Professor Ruth Simbao is the DSI/NRF SARChI Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa and a Professor in the Fine Art Department at Rhodes University, South Africa. She runs the Arts of Africa and Global Souths research programme, and is the founder of the Art POWA network. Prof Simbao is a core researcher in the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence, which is a Rhodes collaboration with the University of Lagos (Nigeria), Moi University (Kenya), Joseph Ki-Zerbo University (Burkina Faso), and Bayreuth University (Germany).
Her recent research interests include contemporary art with a particular focus on Africa; the geopolitics of art and society; Africa–China and the arts; ‘strategic southernness’ and global souths; theories of ‘place’, contra-flow diasporas, cosmolocalism, the power of small spaces, modest gestures, faux pas and failures; artists’ responses to xenophobia; contemporary cultural festivals and globalisation; performance theory and site-situational art, and a geopolitics of knowledge.
Recent curated exhibitions include Thania Petersen: Between land and a raised foot (2019), Bright Ackwerh: Where de choy dey? (2018), Converge (2018), Consuming Us at the Cape Town Art Fair (2016, curated with Azu Nwagbogu), SLIP: Mbali Khoza and Igshaan Adams (2014), the performance art programme BLIND SPOT at the National Arts Festival (2014), and Making Way: Contemporary Art from South Africa and China at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg (2013) and the National Arts Festival in Makhanda (2012).