Okwui Enewzor Postdoctoral Fellow
Gladys Kalichini is a researcher whose interdisciplinary practice examines the intersections of visual culture, memory, gender, and liberation histories. Working across contemporary art, critical humanities, and visual culture, her research investigates how visual representation and curatorial practice shape historical memory and cultural recognition, with particular attention to the visibility and erasure of women’s contributions to anti-colonial and liberation struggles. Her work bridges artistic practice and scholarly inquiry, advancing new approaches to feminist art history and memory studies.
As the 2026 Okwui Enwezor Postdoctoral Fellow at The Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Kalichini will work on a project investigating how visual culture, particularly contemporary art and curatorial practices, functions not only as a reflection of historical memory but also as an active site where gendered narratives are constructed, regulated and contested. Centred on the (In)Visibility Continuum, the project examines the visual and institutional processes through which women’s roles in southern Africa’s liberation struggles have been selectively foregrounded. By analysing how visibility is produced, for whom, and under what conditions, the research interrogates the power relations that shape cultural recognition and demonstrates how memory and history remain contingent, negotiated as well as politically charged.
Kalichini’s research has been published in leading academic and artistic platforms. Her forthcoming article, Beyond the Patriarchal Frame: An Analysis of Portrayals of Black Women in the Work of Kudzanai Chiurai through the Framework of the (In)Visibility Continuum, will appear in the Fall 2026 issue of African Arts. Other significant publications include In Protest of Archival Silence: Restoring the Memory of Women back into the National Independence Narrative (2024) in Audacious Art Histories, this memory will not fade (2024), and I hope that some days will be for resting in Alternative Futures (2026). She is also co-editor of the forthcoming volume Forms of Civic Power, part of the Democratic Vistasseries.
Alongside her scholarly work, Kalichini maintains an artistic practice. She has exhibited internationally. Her solo exhibitions include this memory will not fade (2024) at the Fiona and Sidney Myer Gallery, University of Melbourne; … these gestures of memory (2020) at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; and Chamoneka: UnCasting Shadows (2017) at the Albany History Museum, Makhanda. Her work has also featured in major international group exhibitions, including Die Erinnerung wird nicht verblassen (2025), Seekers, Seers and Soothsayers (2023) at Zeitz MOCAA, the Bamako Biennale (2022), and #empowerment. Planetary Feminisms (2022) at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.
She acquired her Ph.D. in Art History from Rhodes University in Makhanda, South Africa. Her past fellowships, including the Democratic Vistas Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Goethe University, in cooperation with the Werner Reimers Foundation (2024–2025), and the Stuart Black Fellowship at the University of Melbourne (2024).
