Jay Pather is a director, curator, choreographer and academic whose work focuses on interdisciplinary performance, site-specific and public art, decoloniality and social justice. Recent choreography includes Qaphela Caesar, a deconstruction of Julius Caesar at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange; rite, a reimagining of Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps; and surface tension, created during a Villa Albertine residency in New York. Recent theatre works include directing Nadia Davids’ Bridling, Hold Still, and What Remains, for which he won the Fleur du Cap Award for Directing.

He curates Live Art for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, is Artistic Director of the Afrovibes Festival in the Netherlands, co-curates the Spier Light Art Festival in Cape Town and is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cape Town. As director of the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA), he curated the Infecting the City Public Art Festival and the ICA Live Art Festival. He has also co-curated Season Africa 2020/21 in France, the International Theatre Festival in Brazil and Spielart in Munich.

Publications include Acts of Transgressions: Live Art in South Africa and Restless Infections: Public Art for a Transforming City. A monograph, Jay Pather and Spatial Politics, by Professor Ketu Katrak, was recently published. Pather has served as International Chair at Paris 8 University, Fellow at the University of London and Chair of the International Award for Public Art. He was recently named Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government, and is currently Visiting Professor at Princeton University.