Nandipha Mntambo was born in Swaziland in 1982, and graduated with a Masters in Fine Art (with distinction) from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2007. She won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2011, for which she produced the national travelling exhibition Faena. She has had five solo shows at Stevenson in Cape Town (2007, 2009, 2012) and Johannesburg (2009 and 2014); and two at Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm (2013 and 2015). Notable group exhibitions include My Joburg at La Maison Rouge, Paris, and the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (2013); the 3rd Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Moscow (2012); ARS 11, Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki (2011); the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010); the 9th Dakar Biennale (2010); Peekaboo: Current South Africa, Tennis Palace Art Museum, Helsinki (2010); Les Rencontres de Bamako biennial of African photography, Bamako, Mali (2009); Beauty and Pleasure in South African Contemporary Art, Stenersen Museum, Oslo (2009); and Apartheid: The South African Mirror, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona (2008). Mntambo was a Civitella Ranieri Fellow for 2013.