Pertunia.

Pertunia Msani is a South African performing arts
practitioner, vocalist, and facilitator from Pietermaritzburg,
KwaZulu-Natal. Her work is rooted in the understanding
that art has the fundamental responsibility to reflect life and
bridge divides.
She holds a degree in Drama and Performance Studies from
the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She later joined Drama
For Life at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she
went on to serve as Theatre Company Director. Across her
career, she has developed a practice that moves fluidly
between performance and facilitation, always centring the
human experience.

As a vocalist, Pertunia works exclusively with the
unaccompanied voice. Her EP, Izwi (“Voice”), is created
without instruments, drawing on breath, texture, and her
own lived experience. In this work, the voice becomes both
an artistic and cultural archive — holding story, emotion,
and a quiet sense of ceremony.

Her practice has extended into international contexts
through a residency in Miami with the Miami Light Project
and The Centre for the Less Good Idea. There, she shared
IZWI as both performance and method, using the voice as a
point of departure for collaborative creation across
disciplines. Sound became a guiding structure for visual
and physical work, opening space for new forms of
expression and exchange.

Alongside her performance work, Pertunia facilitates
workshops that invite participants to engage their own
stories through voice and collective music-making. These
spaces are carefully held, allowing for openness, listening,
and connection to emerge in an organic way.

Pertunia Msani’s work is defined by its clarity and intention
— an offering that honours the voice as both a personal
instrument and a shared language, capable of bringing
people into deeper relationship with themselves and with
one another.