Hi, I’m Hemali

an artist/researcher/wishfulthinker/playful-maker from Johannesburg, South Africa, working across installation, printmaking, painting, and moving image through my studio, StudioShiftingStill. I’m drawn to collaborative and socially engaged ways of working, and tend to be experimental in my process — sensitive to what the material asks of me.

Much of my work explores themes of belonging and migration, rooted in a desire to connect people to one another’s worlds through storytelling. I’m also interested in gesture and language, motion and fluidity, everyday beauty, perceptions of time, and inherited or informal forms of knowledge, such as oral histories and personal digital archives.

I studied an MA in Filmmaking (Cinematography) at Goldsmiths, University of London, and an Honours in Fine Art at Wits School of Art, including an exchange in Scenography at HEAR, Strasbourg.