Jay Pather is a curator, choreographer and an academic. He is a professor at the University of Cape Town and directs the Institute for Creative Arts. He curates the Infecting the City Public Art Festival and the ICA Live Art Festival in Cape Town. He also curates for the Afrovibes Festival in Amsterdam. Publications include Acts of Transgressions, Live Art in South Africa (2019) and Restless Infections, Public Art for a Transforming City (2025). Pather served as juror for the International Award for Public Art and was appointed Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.
Pather will be a Belknap Long-Term Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Lewis Center for the Arts in Spring 2026. He will teach an undergraduate theater course on interdisciplinarity, curation and decoloniality.
