New Faces, New Visions: RMB Latitudes CuratorLab 2025

The next wave of curators from Africa

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 RMB, Latitudes and Art School Africa invest in the future of curatorial excellence

We are thrilled to announce our 11 chosen curators for the fourth iteration of our educational programme, RMB Latitudes CuratorLab! Offering them mentorship and hands-on experience, peer engagement and professional development. 

Together, RMB, Latitudes and our new partnership with Art School Africa aim to foster a new model for curatorial mentorship – one that bridges theory and practice, and prioritises long-term, sustainable growth within the African arts ecosystem.

Stay tuned as we introduce our mentors and guest speakers. And for our aspiring collectors, look forward to exploring a series of compelling curated shows on Latitudes later this year, brought to you by these 11 exciting curators:

Diarietou Diop, Eyimofe Ideh, Maureen Douabou, Muyon Mafulu, Nafkot Gebeyehu, Onke Ngcuka, Palesa Ngwenya, Phumelele Kunene, Reem Aljeally, Sinki Makubu and Zandile Makroti.

Diarietou Nasradine Diop

Diarietou Nasradine Diop is a multidisciplinary architect and artist based in Dakar (Senegal). With a background in sensory architecture and a lived experience of hearing impairment, her work explores inclusive design, perception, and spatial storytelling. She moves fluidly between the fields of art, technology, and social practice, creating human-centred experiences that centre presence, care, and accessibility. Her curatorial approach is rooted in slowness, tactility, and emotional intelligence, always asking how art can be sensed, not just seen.

Eyimofe Rita Ideh

Eyimofe Ideh is a Lagos-based curator with a strong focus on emerging African artists. She spent over two years managing SOTO Gallery, where she worked closely with the team on multiple exhibitions and international presentations. She has curated the 2 Dimensional Art Pavilion at +234 Art Fair for two consecutive years, showcasing over 200 emerging artists, and led a solo booth presentation at Investec Cape Town Art Fair 2024, amongst other projects. Her curatorial approach focuses on artist visibility, narrative-building, and expanding access to contemporary African art.

Kpingni-Maureen Douabou

Kpingni-Maureen Douabou is a writer, visual artist and curator. She draws on her Ivorian heritage and the legacy of black feminist thinkers and artists from Africa and its diaspora to give birth to alternative narratives and question culture. In her practice, she expands her visual narratives into interdisciplinary realms, weaving together stories of collective resistance, recovery, and the importance of community.

Muyon Danyela Mafulu

Muyon Danyela Mafulu is a South African-born curator and researcher of Congolese and Namibian heritage. She recently completed her Master’s in Art History, where her research explored the tension between preservation and innovation in Congolese art. Focusing on how cultural memory and ancestral lineage shape contemporary practice. Deeply influenced by her roots, Muyon’s curatorial vision centres artists from underrepresented African regions, with a commitment to resisting reductive, Eurocentric frameworks. Her practice combines critical research with a relational approach that honours artists’ authority to reclaim archives as living, spiritual, and intellectual legacies. Her current project, Resonance and Renewal, brings together contemporary artists from West and Central Africa whose practices channel ancestral memory, spiritual lineages, and layered storytelling. Through this project and her wider work, Muyon seeks to open spaces for pan-African dialogue that affirms West and Central African contemporary art as complex, dynamic, and self-defined. She aims to build bridges between artists, publics, and institutions, using curating as a tool for cultural reclamation, theory, and renewal. Muyon believes in curating as both research and resistance — a way to hold space for African contemporary artists whose body of work aims to transform and elevate African art.

Nafkot Gebeyehu

Nafkot Gebeyehu is a co-founder of Studio 11, an art gallery focused on supporting emerging Ethiopian artists and creating room for experimentation. Her work sits at the intersection of journalism, visual culture, and community engagement. With a background in storytelling and a growing curatorial practice, her interests lie in developing frameworks for sustainable artistic communities and expanding access to creative platforms for young practitioners in East Africa.

Onke Ngcuka

Onke Ngcuka is a cultural narrator with a strong focus on storytelling centred around restoring the relationship between humans and the natural world through imagined futures. She is particularly interested in expanding our understanding and framing of the natural world as relatives of humanity through rekindling indigenous knowledge and wisdom. Ngcuka works across the writing, filmmaking and climate communication disciplines, most recently completing a film on climate and spirituality. They have spent the past five years working as a climate and environmental journalist for publications such as Reuters, Daily Maverick and AmaBhungane. Her time at these publications saw her champion climate and environmental justice as well as reporting at international climate conferences and participation in various fellowships. The multi-hyphenate has since started her own company, Ndalo Native, which focuses on climate and environmental literacy through various creative art forms. They hold a deep-seated belief that love and ubuntu can change the world for the best!

Palesa Ngwenya

Palesa Ngwenya is a Johannesburg-based emerging curator and visual storyteller whose work centres around Black South African stories, both personal and collective. With a deep interest in culture, spirituality, identity, memory, womanhood, celebration, and tradition, her practice is driven by the desire to make people feel seen. She believes in the power of storytelling as a healing and connective force, and curates to spark conversation, reflection, and emotional resonance. She aspires to be a curator who creates spaces that feel familiar, reflective, and emotionally resonant. She is inspired by quiet conversations and the intimate details of everyday life. Even though new to curating, she brings a strong sense of observation and concept development to her process, with a personal love for mood boarding and conceptual thinking. Her background in storytelling and aspirations to grow into her artistic voice inform a curatorial approach rooted in intentionality, attentiveness, and imagination. She is committed to growing her practice through collaboration, learning, and community-based work.

Phumelele Kunene

Phumelele Kunene is a South African curator, photographer and entrepreneur whose work weaves together African storytelling, heritage, and visual memory. Rooted in Johannesburg, her practice explores themes of identity, belonging, and the unseen spiritual threads that connect communities. Phumelele curates lens-based exhibitions that move beyond documentation, transforming photography into a space for reflection, healing, and dialogue. She is dedicated to mentoring young photographers, preserving African archives, and shifting how the continent’s narratives are seen and remembered.

Reem Aljeally

Reem Aljeally (b. 1997) is a multifaceted artist whose work integrates architecture, visual arts, and curation. She is the Founder of The Muse multi studios (2019) and The Sudan Art Archive (2022), aiming to support, promote, and preserve visual arts in Sudan. Her artistic practice focuses on painting, installation, and printmaking exploring themes of movement, space, memory, and self-image. She has exhibited internationally in Germany, Spain, Russia, Portugal, The United States, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. Currently, she leads the Artists Development Program at Ubuntu Art Gallery in Cairo, continuing her artistic and curatorial endeavours.

Sibusiso Sinki Makubu

Sinki is an emerging cultural practitioner whose work centers on storytelling and empowering artists through platforms that spotlight contemporary art and creative opportunities. Through Berk Studious, Sinki bridges knowledge gaps, strengthens community ties, and equips emerging artists with tools for sustainable practice. Their curatorial work with BKhz amplifies emerging voices, contributing to exhibitions and projects that prioritise self-expression and transformation. Committed to accessibility, Sinki builds inclusive spaces where creativity thrives.

Zandile Makroti

Zandile (Zandi) Makroti is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Working primarily with film photography, fine art materials, fabric, and costume design, her practice explores themes of feminism, ancestral memory, inner strength, and female psychology. Through richly textured works that blend visual storytelling with spatial and costume-based narratives, Zandi investigates human behaviour, particularly that of women, through a deeply intuitive lens. Her background as a qualified production designer and certified UX researcher informs her sensitivity to audience experience, making her work both emotionally resonant and immersive. Film remains a central influence across all her creative outputs, with each concept unfolding as a distinct visual narrative.