Dada Khanyisa was born in Umzimkhulu in 1991 and lives in Cape Town. They completed a Bachelor of Fine Art degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, in 2016, after studying Traditional and Digital Animation at the National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa.

Cape Town, the artist's first institutional exhibition, currently takes place at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Previous solo shows include Good Feelings, Stevenson, Johannesburg (2020) and Bambi’phone, Stevenson, Cape Town (2018). They have participated in group shows including Growing Out? Growing Up? Contemporary Art Collecting in the Baltics the at Zuzeum Art Centre, Riga, Latvia (2022); SKIN+MASKS, Kavi Gupta, Chicago, USA (2022); 021 - 2021, Stevenson, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2021); My whole body changed into something else, Stevenson, Cape Town (2021); HI-STORYTELLING at Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg (2021); Mixed Company at Norval Foundation, Cape Town (2021); Heroes: Principles of African Greatness at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC (2019); 9 More Weeks and Both, and at Stevenson, Johannesburg (2018); among others at galleries across the country. In 2017 Khanyisa produced Afropolitan Tea Party, a mural at Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, commissioned to give the historic site contemporary appeal.

Khanyisa won the 2022 FNB Art Prize and Simon Gerson Prize at UCT in 2016. As a merit winner at the SA Taxi Art Awards in 2015, their work featured on 10 taxis traversing the main roads of South Africa. They completed a residency at the Cité internationale des arts in Paris in 2022 and participated in a Fountainhead Residency in Miami in 2018.