Jabu Nadia Newman (b.1994) is an artist who works through the mediums of photography and film. Using an agenda of pushing intersectional feminism her work is largely based on the different and complex identities of South African womxn. Her first solo exhibition titled Mokwena, Macquena, Mac Quene, after being awarded the recipient of the Orms Cape Town School of Photography Artist in Residency program looked at issues of Coloured identity in Retreat, Cape Town, the history of forced removals and the result of her family having to change their surname. Newman has recently won the 2nd edition Video Art Award by the Arp Art Residency program Centro Luigi Di Sarro for her video piece untitled:friends (2018).

Jabu’s first museum solo show was presented by Museo Meà and the Associazione ‘Asilo dei Creativi di Meano’. It Takes A Village’ was on view in the Museum’s main exhibition space from September 7, 2019, through October 10, 2019.

Jabu Nadia Newman deftly explores a range of subject matter with a focus on intersectional feminism in South Africa’s post-apartheid landscape. For this exhibition, her photograph The Matriarch (2018) is reprised from her first solo exhibition titled Mokwena, Macquena, Mac Quene, which looked at questions of coloured identity, and the African identities that were given up by coloured individuals in order to survive or live in certain areas. Told through the image and voice of her grandmother Edith MacQuene, Jabu shares with us a deeper engagement of her family’s history; one that results in a surname change, coloured assimilation and shifting identities.