Samkela Stamper

Samkela Stamper, founder of the Thandeka Stamper Art Galari eNgqushwa & co-founder of The Open Space in Rini, is a poet, a playwright, visual and performing artist, an independent producer and curator who calls herself a creative thinker and art-trepreneur.  A worker bee who works with rural & township communities facilitating art skills to young people and women.

Stamper is passionate about urban renewal of local communities and public art development and has initiated and facilitated public art and creative projects commissioned by various organisations. Stamper has performed, worked and exhibited her works in notable festivals and spaces such as the Edinburgh International Festival and Fringe Festival (2012 – 2015), Innibos Festival (2006 – 2013) , Bushfire Festival (2015), Open Book Festival (2012), Jozi Book Fair (2014), The Constitution Hill (2014), World Economic Forum in CT (2013) and Infecting The City Public Art Festival (2013 - 2015) and presented a paper at the UCT’s GIPCA Public Art Symposium 2015 on Public Art, Youth and Women. Stamper was the artist in residence for Afrovibes Festival (2014) as part of the SA-UK Seasons. 

She is a playwright & author of a book called Not for All the Apples, Peanut Butter and Jam and was also assistant curator for Africa Centre’s Badilisha Poetry Exchange Master Voices – Gauteng (2015). Closer to home, Samkela has been a participant of the biggest cultural event in Africa, the National Arts Festival since 2007 in a number of solo and group projects, including her solo work work; La Femme Fatale & Ilizwi with Ingrid Wylde,  curating the Eastern Cape Craft Collection @ The Village Green (2017) and part of Converge Exhibition under the curation of Professor Ruth Simbao (RU) in 2018.

Since the outbreak of Covid 19 in March 2020, Stamper currently resides between Rini & Ngqushwa (with her daughter at the Thandeka Stamper Art Galari) where she is making new work called; NDINXANIWE; A Response on the lack of water in Ngqushwa. Stamper does this work independently in her capacity as a Cultural Artivist whose work is located in Community, Performance and Public Spaces and concerns itself with memory and the archive.

Stamper, a recent mature Fine Art graduate at Rhodes University (2019) is currently working on her proposal to be considered for an MA candidacy for Fine Art/ Environmental Studies called Design for Change at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland (2021/2022) with her research solely based in her hometown, Ngqushwa with its 138 villages as a potential for change in Remaking Place and parts of Rini/ Makhanda. Samkela, an ever enterprising creative, is also working on creating beehives at eGazini Outreach Project & the Galari in Ngqushwa in a partnership with scientist and local honey-wine maker, Dr Garth Camray (RU). Her first beehive – made in Egazini and fired in a traditional outside kiln in Ngqushwa - was recently commissioned by Dr Anna Trapido, who is the curator of the 100 Flavours Exhibition at Makers Landing in Cape Town (Nov/Dec) 2020.