Artist Profile

Kutlwano Monyai (b. 1996, Limpopo, South Africa) is a Johannesburg-based artist, art researcher, writer, and educator whose practice is grounded in material reclamation, cultural memory, and sustainable making. Working primarily through plastic weaving, Monyai transforms discarded and everyday materials into intricate works that draw on familial histories, domestic labour, and intergenerational knowledge systems. By repurposing waste materials, she explores the intersections of environmental responsibility, economic resilience, and aesthetic heritage, positioning sustainability as both a practical and conceptual framework. A graduate of the Tshwane University of Technology, where she completed her Fine and Applied Arts degree and later pursued postgraduate studies, Monyai has exhibited extensively across South Africa, including at the Bag Factory, Pretoria Art Museum, Candice Berman Gallery, and Berman Contemporary. Her achievements include the Young Woman Studio Residency at the Bag Factory and recognition as one of the Top 40 Designers in the Design Indaba Emerging Creative Class of 2022. Through her multifaceted practice, Monyai reimagines discarded materials as vessels of storytelling, preserving personal and collective histories while contributing to contemporary conversations on sustainability, care, and artistic inheritance.