Nov 8

Nov 8 Giya Makondo-Wills

Giya Makondo-Wills is a British-South African documentary photographer who graduated from the University of South Wales with a degree in Documentary Photography in 2017. Most recently, she was selected as Young Selector for 'Empire through the Lens: pictures from the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection' from the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society 160 Exhibition.

Makondo-Wills’ work, divided between her time in South Africa and the U.K., focuses on identity, colonization, and inverting the Western gaze. Her most recent and ongoing project, “They Came From The Water While The World Watched”, is based on South African Ancestral belief and Christianity, specifically regarding missionaries and the colonial aspects of this practice. This project, in particular, addresses the relationship between the two religions and the colonizer and the colonized—both aspects of the photographer’s own identity and family’s traditional beliefs. The photographer is currently based in Cardiff, U.K.