LINDOKUHLE YENDE

Her work emerges from a deeply personal place, drawing on lived experiences to engage with broader themes of identity, memory, spirituality, grief, healing, and the politics of the body. Holding a BA in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand, Yende’s work focuses on personal and familial histories and knowledges in order to interrogate the complexities of being, belonging, and becoming in South Africa.

Through the making of portraits and self-portraits, Yende critically engages the gaze, challenging and expanding notions of selfhood and embodiment. Her work involves close-up portraits that explore intimacy, vulnerability, and connection, and demands a self-reflexive vulnerability. Yende approaches her work through searching for something that is not always known to her at first, and later dealing with these findings. The process of searching elicits yet more questions, reframing what she has been taught to understand about herself and the world around her.

Yende uses her family history as a way to explore knowledge systems that have influenced her identity and development within her practice. As part of this process, she revisits personal family albums to resituate herself within a nexus of identities. Through the inquiry into her family’s history, she attempts to deepen her ideas and understanding of selfhood and spirituality.

Yende’s recent exhibitions include Segregated Cause and Effect (2021) at the 2nd Quanzhou (Huaguang) International Image Biennial 2022. In 2023, the same work was selected for the Pingyao International Photography Festival. In 2024, she wrote, directed, and filmed her debut documentary, Unlocking Fiona Take’s Voice, produced during her fellowship with Accountability Lab. That same year, she was awarded the prestigious Tierney Fellowship for the 2024/2025 period. In 2025, Yende had her first solo exhibition, Uthini uma Sekwenzekile at The Point of Order.