Mary Sibande was born in Barbeton, South Africa. She currently lives and works in Johannesburg. Sibande obtained an Honours degree from the University of Johannesburg in 2007 following a Diploma in Fine Arts from the Witwatersrand Technical College in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2004. Notable awards include the 2017 Smithsonian National Museum of African Arts Award; the University of Johannesburg Alumni Dignitas Award in 2014 and the 2013 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts. Sibande is also the recipient of several residencies, fellowships and tenures, including the 2018-2019 Virginia C. Gildersleeve Professorship at Barnard College at Columbia University in New York, USA; the MAC/VAL Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne in Paris, France and the STAMPS School of Art & Design Fellowship at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, USA in 2013; the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (SARF) in Washington, D.C, USA in 2011; the Ampersand Foundation Fellowship in New York, USA in 2009 and the Cite des Arts International Residency in Paris, France in 2006.

Sibande’s work was recently included in Radical Revisionists: Contemporary African Artists Confronting Past and Present at Moody Centre for the Arts – Rice University in Houston, USA in 2020. In 2019 Sibande presented her first UK solo exhibition of new works, titled I came apart at the seams, at Somerset House in London, UK. The exhibition opened in collaboration with 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair. Sibande’s works were included in the 14th Curitiba Biennale in Curitiba, Brazil; the group exhibition Made Visible: Contemporary South African Fashion and Identity at the Boston Museum of Fine Art; as well as in the 2019 Havana Biennale in Havana, Cuba.

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