Anthea Buys
b, 1984 Johannesburg Based in South Africa
Anthea is an independent researcher, curator, and writer living in South Africa. She is interested in collective fabulation, unlikely place-making, constructive failure and improvisation. Her PhD research looked at New Babylon, the interdisciplinary life’s work of the Dutch artist and architect Constant Nieuwenhuys.
She has curated exhibitions for Tallinn Art Hall, Hordaland Art Centre in Bergen (where she was director, 2014-2017), WIELS Project Space in Brussels, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, where her current undertaking is a retrospective exhibition of the South African, France-based performance artist Steven Cohen (forthcoming December 2025).
CV
b, 1984 Johannesburg Based in South Africa
Anthea is an independent researcher, curator, and writer living in South Africa. She is interested in collective fabulation, unlikely place-making, constructive failure and improvisation. Her PhD research looked at New Babylon, the interdisciplinary life’s work of the Dutch artist and architect Constant Nieuwenhuys.
She has curated exhibitions for Tallinn Art Hall, Hordaland Art Centre in Bergen (where she was director, 2014-2017), WIELS Project Space in Brussels, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, where her current undertaking is a retrospective exhibition of the South African, France-based performance artist Steven Cohen (forthcoming December 2025).
CV
TEXTS: A sample, in changing order of enjoyability
2023
Shooting from the hip, or, on being strategically unstrategic
2022
Category Error
2022
‘Yes to who or what arrives’: Hospitality and Property in Contemporary Art
(Excerpt)
2019
We Asked For It
2017
Image Drain
2015
Painting in Flat Time (on the occasion of Carl Johan Högberg’s exhibition Shuttlecock, feat. Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar)
2023
Shooting from the hip, or, on being strategically unstrategic
2022
Category Error
2022
‘Yes to who or what arrives’: Hospitality and Property in Contemporary Art
(Excerpt)
2019
We Asked For It
2017
Image Drain
2015
Painting in Flat Time (on the occasion of Carl Johan Högberg’s exhibition Shuttlecock, feat. Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar)
EXHIBITIONS and makings
2025
Steven Cohen: Long Life
Iziko South African National Gallery. Opening December 2025.
2020-2023
FORMS
2021
Hedwig Barry: Here is Where We Meet
Download catalogue
2017
Image Drain
download the beautiful poster-catalogue
2014-2017
Hordaland Kunstsenter (Director)
Carl Johan Högberg: Shuttlecock, feat. Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar
James Webb: Xenagogue
Dineo Seshee Bopape: We need the memories if all our members
Toril Johannesen: Oppfinnelsen og avviklingen av øyet
The Land
After the Exhibition
2025
Steven Cohen: Long Life
Iziko South African National Gallery. Opening December 2025.
2020-2023
FORMS
2021
Hedwig Barry: Here is Where We Meet
Download catalogue
2017
Image Drain
download the beautiful poster-catalogue
2014-2017
Hordaland Kunstsenter (Director)
Carl Johan Högberg: Shuttlecock, feat. Bob’s Your Uncle Sports Bar
James Webb: Xenagogue
Dineo Seshee Bopape: We need the memories if all our members
Toril Johannesen: Oppfinnelsen og avviklingen av øyet
The Land
After the Exhibition