Name: Lerato Shadi
Place of Birth: South Africa
Year of Birth: 1979
Areas of Work: Performance, Video
Website: www.lerato-shadi.net

Lerato Shadi currently lives and works in Berlin (Germany) and Johannesburg South Africa. She completed a BFA in Fine Art from the University of Johannesburg. In 2008 she was a featured artist in Art South Africa magazine, and in 2009 she was included in the The Generational: Younger Than Jesus artists-directory published by the New Museum, New York.

In 2010 she was awarded a Pro Helvetia residency in Bern, Switzerland. In the same year she had her solo exhibition Mosako Wa Seipone at GoetheonMain in Johannesburg. From 2010 to 2012 she was a member of the Bag Factory artist studios in Fordsburg, Johannesburg. In 2012 her work was featured at the Dak’art Biennale in Senegal and in the III Moscow International Biennale.

She is currently doing her MFA at the Kunsthochschule Berlin Weissensee.

“The prevailing themes in my current body of work are a performative investigation into transformation, or transition, through performance from absence to presence, from subject to object, and vice versa. I use elements such as concentration, breath, duration and span to establish an exploration of the performer in space and time. Knitting, installation, video and sound are some of the media I have used to record my topical inquiries. An additional and intrinsic element to my work is the titling of it, mainly in Setswana, my mother tongue. The titling plays on the politics of inclusion and exclusion.”