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Yinka Shonibare, Refugee Astronaut X (2024), and in the background, Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500 (2023) by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, in the Reverse Futures exhibition. -
Yinka Shonibare, Refugee Astronaut X (2024), in the Reverse Futures exhibition. -
Etel Adnan, Satellites 27 (2020), in the Reverse Futures exhibition. Oil on canvas. Private Collection. -
Georgia Munnik, The Strangling Fruit (2026), in the Reverse Futures exhibition. -
Paula Gaetano Adi, Guanaquerx (2024), in the Reverse Futures exhibition. -
Visitors experiencing the VR installation Fisher Child (2025) by Traci Kwaai in the Reverse Futures exhibition. -
View of Reverse Futures exhibition showing Paula Gaetano Adi, Guanaquerx (2024) in the foreground, and Georgia Munnik, The Strangling Fruit (2026) at left; with Cave_bureau’s installation Shimoni Slave Cave (2022–2023) in the background. -
View of Reverse Futures exhibition, from left Etel Adnan, Satellites 27 (2020); Yinka Shonibare, Refugee Astronaut X (2024) and Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since 1500 (2023) by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler. -
View of Wolff Architects, Reading Room (2024) in the Reverse Futures exhibition.
As part of a trilogy of exhibitions presented by the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, Reverse Futures brings together artists and architects who engage with questions of space, place and race through the lens of technology.
PHOTOS Graham De Lacy
As the final instalment in the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation‘s acclaimed Worldmaking exhibition series, Reverse Futures expands on the themes presented in Ecospheres (2024) and Structures (2025) by exploring the techno-future.
Centred on ideas of the future from the Global South, where past, present and future are interconnected, Reverse Futures examines how the effects of colonialism, migration and technological change continue to shape both the present and our vision of what lies ahead.
The featured artworks reflect on migration, memory, ecology, the cosmos and power, inviting viewers to reconsider the role of technology. These themes unfold through immersive and unexpected encounters that challenge dominant narratives of progress, opening space for alternative ways of imagining the planet’s future without losing sight of ongoing injustices, including how they may be reproduced beyond Earth.
Visitors in the installation Event Horizon (2026) by Kamil Adam Hassim, in the Reverse Futures exhibition.
“While the central idea of the Reverse Futures exhibition engages with technology, it does this from a local vantage, asking fundamentally humane questions about the world we inhabit. How might we imagine a better world not built on power and extraction, but one that enables us to think about our future in South Africa as part of a continuum of community, environmental care and historical learning? Can artists help us to define a new path for future generations that is generative and equitable? Through spectacular and subtle ideas, offering beauty and pathos, the exhibition will excite adults and children alike,” says JCAF’s Executive Director and curator of the exhibition, Clive Kellner.
The exhibition’s curation is centred on three interconnected sections: Space, Time and Place.
Space presents the cosmos through Indigenous knowledge, displacement and perception, framing it as a site of survival and imagination; Time connects cave histories and modernist painting, showing how past and present intertwine through shared marks, gestures and the legacies of colonialism; and Place explores how technology and sensory experience can connect locations, memories and communities, creating new ways of archiving personal and collective stories.
Featured artists
- Etel Adnan (Lebanon / United States)
- Cave_bureau (Kenya)
- Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler (Australia / United States; Serbia)
- Paula Gaetano Adi (Argentina)
- Kamil Adam Hassim (South Africa)
- Traci Kwaai (South Africa)
- Ernest Mancoba (South Africa)
- Georgia Munnik (South Africa)
- Yinka Shonibare (Nigeria / United Kingdom)
Special projects
- Rebecca Potterton (South Africa)
- Wolff Architects (South Africa)
Reverse Futures runs until 5 December 2026. | jcaf.org.za
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