about
photo: Jurczok1001Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk is an architectural researcher, designer and performer from Johannesburg, South Africa. Through her multidisciplinary approach, Khensani mobilzes visual, written and sonic expressions to remember histories untold and imagine possibilities yet to unfold. Her practice positions architecture as a spatial storyteller.
She is the founder of Matri-Archi(tecture), an association that hosts a network of African and diasporic spatial practitioners dedicated to learning about histories, realities and imaginaries through spatial expression. Matri-Archi offers a site for artistic collaboration through design, art and architectural research projects.
She is a doctoral fellow at the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) ETH Zürich, focusing on long-standing research concerned with how architecture is implicated in our understandings of safe space. Her PhD focuses on the forms of kinship that Black foreign women have constructed in Zürich since the 1980s.
She is a mentor in the Building Beyond programme, where she offers guidance to 12 spatial practioners and artists from across the African continent for a year. She has been a mentor in the programme since 2021.
She is also the host and producer of the podcast KONTEXT.
She previously taught at the chair of Affective Architectures at the ETH Zürich, where she co-coordinated the Department of the Ongoing platform. She has also taught in Johannesburg and practiced in London, amongst engaging in educational contexts at various instititions across the world, including South Africa, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and central Europe.
She has exhibited work in various contexts including the Chicago Architecture Biennial (us), Vitra Design Museum (de), Keyes Art Mile (sa), Pinakothek der Moderne (de) to name a few.
She received a Bachelors in Architecture and a Bachelors of City Planning (Hons) from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) as well as an MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (RIBA II) from the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).
On the odd occasion she appears as ‘Khe’ , where she explores emotive presences embedded in spatial conditions through spoken word projects.
She is fluent in English; and speaks Xitsonga, Afrikaans and German (CEFR B2).
for more information about ongoing work or to send consulting requests, project proposals and comission offers: khensanideklerk.work@gmail.com
Khensani Jurczok-de Klerk© 2024