WORDS Sean O’Toole PHOTOS Dillon Marsh, Courtesy Blank Projects, Goodman Gallery, Matt Slater, Charl Dettmer/Art Forme

It’s no secret that the commercial art world has been experiencing topsy-turvy times. The cycle of boom-and-bust of the past few years has seen art collectors cycle through rages for photography and installation, figurative painting and NFT art, textile and clay artists, and most recently safe-bet Modernists – preferably female Surrealists.

In such unstable weather, it is tough for makers and consumers of art to find their bearings. One reference is the secondary market, but it offers a glum diagnosis of things. Painting – be it figurative or abstract – is still is still top of the pops at auction. But, joyfully, there is a counterargument. It is being formulated in the studios of young artists in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Painting? Nah! Profiled here are five emerging artists whose practices typify some of the bold ideas being explored by young artists born aft er 1990. In summary, anything goes… just not painting.

Last year, PIA TRUSCOTT enrolled in a mentorship programme run by artist Dominique Edwards, prompting a radical shift in her practice – to working in three dimensions. The sculptural turn heralded by her recent “wire arrangements” goes back to a series of collages she made from discarded maps. “I began experimenting with wire,” she says. The material reminded her of drawing – “moving a line through space”.

But there was more to it than that. “ While it can be controlled and manipulated, wire also has the ability to bounce back and hold a life of its own.” Earlier this year, Pia presented a resolved body of these works at Cape Town’s AVA Gallery. Redolent of the work of Igshaan Adams and Bronwyn Katz, these porous and fragile pieces are the product of scavenging. The process is central to her practice – her earliest works were made from found plastic bags, which she arranged with a painterly aptitude for colour.

The individual elements (bits of rope, broken zips, left over 3D printing fi lament) in her “wire arrangements” are foraged on walks through Paarden Eiland, and from fabric stores in Woodstock. She says the suspended objects represent “an alphabet or language around daily life, and the places that I visit and the things that I pick up”. | @piatruscott

AARON PHILANDER started an experimental gallery with some friends in 2024, while still an art student at UCT – and he attributes his current visibility as an artist to the lessons he learnt co-managing Demo Projects. “It taught me how to network and talk to industry professionals,” he says. It also gave him a curatorial eye for displaying work. Most importantly, it taught him self-reliance – a quality that informed his graduate work.

Interested in sculpturally exploring what it means, historically, to be coloured (mixed race), Aaron’s student work comprised recycled tools and implements salvaged from the family shed. He’s consistently returned to his family for inspiration. In 2025, for his debut solo with AVA Gallery, he showed crude, wall- hung assemblages incorporating kitchen implements and photos linked to his deceased grandmother.

The “journey of self-discovery and healing” this work initiated continues. Earlier this year, Aaron presented a solo with Lemkus Gallery. His work included carved wooden reliefs, a kinetic sculpture and text works. Beneath the restraint of his work was a genuine ache. Many of the pieces referenced (and honoured) his hard-working grandfather, a retired artisan with dementia. “My practice has become a thing of learning – or relearning – what is forgotten.” | @aaron philander_

THEMBINKOSI HLATSHWAYO was three when his father opened Ray’s Inn in Lawley, southwest of Joburg. Locals nicknamed the violent drinking den “slaghuis” (butchery). Years later, while studying at the Market Photo Workshop, he drew on his youthful feelings of guilt and shame to produce “Slaghuis I” (2018) – a body of work that comprised various self-portraits of Thembinkosi in distressed poses, their worn-out surfaces a hallmark of his experimental photography. To achieve the texture, he photographed himself, made cheap photocopies, pinned them up in his father’s tavern, and re-photographed the results. His ingenuity was rewarded with the Swiss-based CAP Prize for Contemporary African Photography in 2019. Other awards followed.

But then, in 2021, his father died, and Thembinkosi had to take over the family business. “There was a self-destructive phase,” he says. His breakthrough photographic project about vestiges and residues saved him. He realised his work is about more than literal traces – it’s also about the things we inherit from our parents.

Thembinkosi’s recent solo with Blank Projects included new self-portraits and an installation made from blackened photocopy paper. “There’s something physical about seeing,” he says. “It touches you. It’s definitely how I treat the photo as well.” | @thembinkosih15

BEN ORKIN recently launched a physical therapy practice. “Unlock tension”, the Cape Town artist’s business card reads. But he hasn’t forsaken his great passion: clay. “Since starting to work with the body in 2025 and learning more about the anatomy of it, my relationship with clay has developed in exciting ways,” he says. The body, he explains, stores memories physically – just like clay.

Outwardly, Ben’s recent sculptural forms retain a formal likeness to the earlier glazed pieces informed by his gay identity, presented in his debut solo with Cape Town’s Whatiftheworld Gallery in 2021. All of Ben’s works are fabricated from rolled coils of wet clay that he stacks on top of each other, over and over, before smoothing them together. Their squat form and occasional multi-part assembly is linked to the small kilns he currently shares with his mother, ceramicist Gemma Orkin.

Ben constantly has to figure out clever ways to work at scale, as well as to protect the fragile protrusions. These logistical challenges speak to something essential about the medium. “You begin with such a malleable, soft , wet material, which then dries and becomes so fragile that you can barely touch it.” | @benorkin

OUPA SIBEKO formulated his liberated art practice by jumping between international residencies. “I’m more comfortable making works in residencies than for a gallery.” A 2025 solo at Lemkus Gallery summarised the various coordinates of his freethinking work. It included gonzo rubbings – oil and pastel frottage works, made on Cape Town’s streets, that have become his calling card. Everard Read will be showing a new series. The Lemkus show also included large-scale etchings made in 2023 in Germany using ice-skates as an engraving tool. If that sounds absurd, try fishing in a waterlogged Joburg pothole – which he did for a 2019 performance linked to a postgrad pivot to art. He says growing up in Roodepoort, among sinkholes and mining operations, made him partial to potholes. But it was caring for his stroke-affected grandmother as an adolescent that was consequential. Shortly before her passing, she instructed him to play. He obliged by studying theatre at Wits.

Performance, Oupa says, taught him about the importance of the body, of presence, of risk, of not knowing what’s going to happen. These qualities inform his rubbings, many made in District Six. The process of their making invites human encounter. People strike up conversations, ask questions. “That’s what I love about the streets. There’s no secrecy.” | @oupa.sibeko

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WORDS & INTERVIEW Palesa Mohola PHOTOS Nicole Landman

The President Hotel – set between the ocean and the slopes of Lion’s Head in Bantry Bay – holds a distinct place in the city’s hospitality landscape, shaped by a deep commitment to locally made furniture, natural materials and a curated selection of South African art.

It is this dedication to South African art that finds its fullest expression in In Residence, an ongoing exhibition series presented by The President Hotel in collaboration with local non-profit organisation Art School Africa, bringing Cape Town’s contemporary artistic voices into the everyday spaces of the hotel.

One of those voices is Zarah Cassim, a painter who works primarily in layers of oil paint and creates dream-like, surreal landscapes. Based in both Paris and Cape Town, she is a graduate of the University of Cape Town, where she completed an Honours in Fine Art in 2014, and the co-founder of Hotel Hernandez Art School. Her striking work has been exhibited across South Africa as well as internationally.

Zarah breaks down the creative process behind her work currently on show at The President Hotel.

Can you walk us through your creative process – from the initial idea to the finished work?

“I allow the painting to guide me. I often start with a colour and an abstract shape and build upon that, rather than beginning with a fixed idea of what the painting should become. Lately, I’ve also been allowing my children to collaborate on my works. They use my brushes and create images and marks on the canvas that I then work from and work into. I love the sense of freedom in this process, and seeing the dynamic way that one mark can inform the next and ultimately shape the final image.”

Memory and perception seem central to your practice – the way places linger long after their details have faded. How did this interest first develop, and are any of the works in this exhibition rooted in a specific memory or place?

“I’ve always felt that reality exists in multiple layers, and that perception plays a huge role in shaping our experience of it. I’m interested in becoming aware of those layers and questioning what we consider real and what we consider surreal. My works exist somewhere between a dream and reality. What feels like a dream to one person could be another person’s reality. It’s all connected to perception and to that very thin line between reality and illusion.

“The works aren’t necessarily rooted in one specific memory or place. They are more like fragments of memories and impressions that have been absorbed and reassembled.”

How does the natural landscape influence your work? Do you paint from observation, from memory, or somewhere in between?

“For the past few years, I’ve been travelling a lot and living between France, Spain and South Africa. The changing landscapes definitely enter my work on a subconscious level. I imagine spaces rather than painting specific places. Landscapes become blurred, and moments and imagery from one country find ways to collaborate and collide in a kind of subconscious collage. I’ve found similarities between certain spaces, and because I don’t work from photographs but from memory, I think there is a definite layered montage of places within my mind.”

What first inspired you to create for this exhibition, and what do you hope it communicates to those who encounter it?

“I think the work grew quite organically from the period of my life that I’m in now. Living between different countries, moving between familiar and unfamiliar landscapes, and experiencing life with my children has made me very aware of how much our surroundings and experiences shape the way we see the world. I wasn’t trying to create a particular narrative with this body of work. I wanted to follow the paintings and allow them to become their own spaces. I hope that when someone encounters the work, they can bring their own memories and perceptions into it. I like the idea that a painting can feel familiar without the viewer necessarily knowing why – that it can evoke a place, a feeling or a memory that belongs entirely to them.”

This exhibition spans oil on canvas, board and Fabriano paper. How does your choice of surface affect the work, and do you find yourself drawn to a particular medium?

“The surface definitely changes the way I work. Canvas gives me a sense of freedom and allows me to work quite physically, building up layers and marks. Board feels more contained and immediate, while paper has a delicacy that changes the relationship between the mark and the surface. I don’t necessarily choose the surface before I begin. Sometimes the material itself dictates how the work develops. I’m particularly drawn to the physicality of oil paint – the way it can be layered, scraped back and reworked. I enjoy that tension between control and unpredictability.”

The exhibition moves between large-scale works like The Dance I and more intimate pieces such as Sherbet, Berry and Bleed. How does scale shape the way you approach a painting?

“Scale changes the physical relationship I have with the painting. With a large work, I become much more immersed in it. I’m moving around it, stepping back and coming close again, and the marks become more physical and instinctive. The smaller works feel more intimate. There is a different kind of concentration involved, and I find myself noticing smaller gestures and details. I like having both within a body of work because they create different ways of entering the paintings. Some works ask you to step into them, while others ask you to come closer.”

What does it mean to you to have your work presented as part of the In Residence series?

“I really like the idea of the work being shown within a lived environment rather than being completely separated from everyday life. It feels appropriate to my practice because my paintings are connected to lived experience, memory and the spaces we inhabit. There is also an intimacy to In Residence. The work becomes part of an environment rather than something distant or untouchable, and I think that changes the way you encounter it.”

In Residence brings art into everyday spaces beyond the traditional gallery. Why is that kind of accessibility important to you, and how do you think it changes the way people experience art?

“I like the idea of encountering art unexpectedly, within a space that has its own sense of life and personality. It can make the experience feel more intuitive and personal. Art doesn’t have to feel distant or exclusive – sometimes the most meaningful connection happens when you simply come across a work and it speaks to you.”

You’ve exhibited in Australia, Spain and France, among other places. How has showing your work internationally shaped or challenged your practice?

“Moving between different countries has definitely influenced my work. Each place has its own visual language, landscapes, light and atmosphere, and I think all of those things find their way into my paintings, even when I’m not consciously thinking about them. Showing internationally has also made me more aware of how differently a work can be perceived depending on where it is seen and who is looking at it. That connects closely to my interest in perception – the painting remains the same, but the experience of it can change completely.”

In Residence, the exhibition series featuring Zarah’s work, will be on show until 11 January 2027 at The President Hotel. presidenthotel.co.za | artschoolafrica.com | @zarahcassim

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PHOTOS Supplied

Nando’s Creative Exchange (NCX) is the flagship artist development programme within the Nando’s Art Initiative, delivered in partnership with Spier Arts Trust. It recognises emerging fine artists from Southern Africa who demonstrate exceptional talent, providing the support they need to take the next steps in their careers.

Now in its 15th year, the programme continues to provide artists with mentorship, materials and exhibition platforms that help turn creative potential into sustainable careers. Bekezela Mabena, Luxolo Witvoet, Mpumelelo Samantha Maseko and Viola Greyling are the four artists selected for the 2026 Nando’s Creative Exchange. Their exhibition, titled Tiriparwendo, takes its name from a Shona word meaning “we are on a journey”.

Bekezela Mabena

Home is not always where you were born. Sometimes, home is something you spend a lifetime moving toward. For Bekezela Mabena, that search has become the defining subject of his art and, more recently, the lens through which he understands fatherhood.

Born in Tembisa in 1996, Mabena is a Johannesburg-based visual artist and printmaker whose practice has been shaped by his movement between South Africa and Zimbabwe. Questions around migration, identity and belonging feel less like themes and more like lived reality. But becoming a father shifted something fundamental. “Being a father makes you think about time differently,” he says. “It makes you realise that being a traveller and migrant isn’t just about moving across land; it’s about passing down who you are.”

When Mabena returned to the place that first made him, he found himself a stranger to his own old ways. The process of relearning – sitting still long enough to simply be somewhere – became the emotional core of this body of work. “It’s a mirror for anyone who has ever felt they belong to more than one place,” he says. “It is about faith, about starting over, and about finding out that no matter where the road takes us, we are all just trying to make it home.”

His mixed-media prints and paintings bring these ideas into bold, layered visual conversations, where colour and mark-making do the work that words cannot. Through the Nando’s Creative Exchange, Mabena joins a cohort of artists who share an understanding that the most personal work is often the most universal – and that belonging, wherever you find it, is worth expressing. | @mabenaart

Luxolo Theophilus Witvoet

Luxolo Theophilus Witvoet never had a formal art education. What he has is life experience, which can’t be taught: a personal history of displacement, a sharp eye and an instinct for finding the extraordinary in the everyday.

Born in Qonce (King William’s Town) and raised in Cape Town, Witvoet’s story of migration begins long before his own birth. “This body of work is deeply rooted in my own history of migration,” he says, “a legacy that starts with my grandparents’ journey from Lesotho and the Northern Cape to Cape Town in search of a better life.” When his parents’ marriage broke up, a six-year-old Witvoet was relocated to Cape Town with his mother. He describes the move as a feeling of exile. “While migration and exile are separate concepts, I see them as cousins,” he says.

A multidisciplinary artist who moves fluidly between digital image-making and traditional painting, Witvoet turns his gaze toward people forced to flee, migrate or live in exile, examining the circumstances that compel people to leave and what happens to the communities, stories and identities left behind. He incorporates his subjects into scenes and landscapes rather than painting them in isolation. He renders them in acrylic, then uses tobacco ash, flashband, gold leaf and cut-out canvas to translate digital figures into tactile, layered surfaces.

Witvoet brings a uniquely forged creative language to the Nando’s Creative Exchange – and a body of work that insists on asking who we are, where we come from and what we carry when we leave. | @luxolowitvoet

Mpumelelo Samantha Maseko

Mpumelelo Samantha Maseko lets the subject matter of her art determine the medium she uses. She says her work rewards those who dare to look closer. Born in Boschfontein, Mpumalanga, in 1997 and now based in Johannesburg, Maseko’s multidisciplinary practice spans oil painting, collage, assemblage, mixed media and printmaking. It deliberately refuses to be confined to a single form of expression. At the centre of it all is a singular focus: Black femininity, identity and the intimate, layered process of becoming.

Her work explores migration as a psychological and cultural experience. “I am interested in what remains within the individual after they have crossed a geographical boundary,” she says, “the memories, language, beliefs, culture and identities that continue to shape their sense of self.”

The figures in her paintings reflect this tension. “The absence of a mouth speaks to the silencing and displacement that can occur when an individual enters an unfamiliar social environment, where even the way they speak can become a marker of difference.” Fabric, meanwhile, becomes an extension of home – cultural memory made visible. Hair, too, marks identity, communicating cultural affiliation and geographical origin long after a person has physically moved away.

Her work does not position Black women as subjects to be interpreted, but as the authors of their own stories, their own myths and their own evolving power. Through the Nando’s Creative Exchange, Maseko steps into a new phase of storytelling with the mentorship, resources and collective energy to push her practice further. | @impumelelo__m

Viola Greyling

Not all journeys are measured in kilometres. Some are felt in the body, carried across generations or, in Viola Greyling’s case, traced and pressed into clay.

Born and based in Pretoria, Greyling is a ceramic artist whose sculptural work explores identity, memory and the emotional landscape of belonging – particularly as experienced through migration and displacement. For Greyling, clay is a collaborator. “In its unfired state, its plasticity allows it to shift and react when moved, holding a physical memory of change,” she says. “This material behaviour reflects the way we, as people, respond to the environments we move through, carrying traces of each place while continually adjusting to the next.”

Her forms draw on the slow, patient growth of stalagmites. Identity is interpreted as something shaped gradually through time and experience rather than fixed at a single point. Seeds collected from specific places connect the work to the environments she has moved between, translated into clay as small records of place that capture fragments of an environment and a moment in time. Found objects pressed into clay surfaces function as markers of place, traces of movement and imprints of a hybrid identity still being navigated.

“Migration does not simply mean leaving one place for another,” Greyling says, “but carrying pieces of each place with us as we evolve.” Her contribution to the Nando’s Creative Exchange is a practice as patient and deliberate as the medium itself – and work that asks us to consider what we carry with us, and what we leave behind. | @violaartgrey

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WORDS Neyani Mphephu PHOTOS Slater Studio

At the corner of Alpha and Lower Loop Streets in Cape Town’s CBD, a daily commute has become an encounter with African photography. The Mission for Inner City Cape Town has unveiled Alpha Street Gallery, a free, open-air exhibition that transforms one of the city’s busiest pedestrian routes – travelled by 8 600 people each weekday – into a space for pause and discovery.

The gallery presents two collections, curated by Ruby Schalit of ICLEI Africa and Shani Judes of SJ Artists. Unsung Heroes, developed through AfriFOODlinks’ #AfricanCITYFOODMonth photography competition, features winning images selected from more than 180 submissions by photographers across the continent. The collection celebrates the often-unseen individuals who sustain urban food systems – informal traders, community growers, researchers, educators and custodians of traditional food knowledge. City in Motion, a retrospective drawing on six years of RISE Africa’s annual photography competitions, offers perspectives on how people experience, shape and reimagine cities, capturing the movement and complexity of African urban life.

SJ Artists and Orms bring a track record of outdoor photography to the project, having staged similar displays along the Sea Point Promenade. “Our vision has always been to create an Inner City that feels vibrant, welcoming and alive every day of the week,” says Brad Armitage, co-founder of Mission for Inner City Cape Town. “Every artwork, every activation and every investment in the public realm gives people another reason to walk, explore and reconnect with Cape Town.”

“Cities are remembered because of how they make people feel,” says Brad. “Public spaces should do more than simply move people from one place to another. They should spark curiosity, encourage people to stop, connect and experience the city differently.”

For Ruby, displaying the images in the heart of the city carries its own significance. “Bringing these images together helps us see African urban life in all its diversity and displaying them in the heart of Cape Town means those stories can now become part of thousands of people’s everyday journey through the city,” she says.

Shani sees the work as a means of strengthening how people relate to their surroundings. “When our cities celebrate local stories and lived experiences, public spaces become places of pride, connection and belonging,” she says.

Free to visit, Alpha Street Gallery invites commuters, residents and visitors alike to encounter African photography in an unexpected setting – proof that some of Cape Town’s most inspiring galleries have no walls at all. missionforinnercity.org | africa.iclei.org

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WORDS Palesa Mohola PHOTOS Courtesy of Gallery MOMO

Gallery MOMO is no stranger to the American art scene. It has exhibited at art fairs such as EXPO CHICAGO since 2019 and at Navy Pier in April 2026, and maintains an artist residency with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Atlanta Art Fair is the next American chapter of that programme and marks Gallery MOMO’s first appearance at the fair.

Representing the gallery are two South African artists whose practices, though distinct in medium and approach, share a deep engagement with identity, memory and heritage.

Fhatuwani Mukheli is a Johannesburg-born multi-disciplinary artist whose work often centres on the relationship between parent and child. Working in acrylic paint, charcoal, fineliner and spray paint, he gravitates towards earthy reds drawn from his Venda heritage.

Blessing Blaai is a Johannesburg-based visual artist and muralist trained in painting, drawing and printmaking. He works across oil, acrylic, watercolour, ink and mixed media.

The works that will be showcased at this year’s fair comprise paintings and mixed-media pieces, including Fhatuwani’s A Study of Freedom, a large four-panel painting, and Blessing’s Surmount, a mixed-media artwork.

We spoke to both artists, who gave us insight into the creative process behind their works for the Atlanta Art Fair:

Can you walk us through your creative process, from planning your piece to the final product, and what was your favourite part of making your exhibition piece?

Fhatuwani Mukheli: “My process is quite layered and can be lengthy because I find inspiration everywhere. I read a lot of art books, Renaissance books and art history, looking at the stories artists were telling at the time and imagining my own life and reality within them. I’m also constantly collecting references, colours, compositions, clothing, poses, light, music and things I see in everyday life.

“From there, I sketch and build compositions, sometimes reimagining historical works and sometimes creating completely new stories rooted in my upbringing and where I come from. My favourite part is when all those different references finally come together and the work begins to feel like my own world.”

Blessing Blaai: “Process starts from a collection of drawings and references (new and old) which basically form my “library”. I take cut-outs I’ve made, drawings and other motifs and combine them to form the base of the artwork, which is done as an underpainting. Once happy, I start the next step where I section each part of the work using masking tape (which has become both tedious but very satisfying at the end), then paint.

“Once dry, I pull off the tape, which has become my favourite part as I get to see the results for the first time.”

What new ways of creating did you experiment with when putting together this piece, and how did they improve the quality of your work?

FM: “I’ve been experimenting more with how I build compositions and how different references can exist within one image. Instead of simply recreating a historical composition, I take elements from different places, Renaissance imagery, photography, contemporary African life, clothing and my own memories, and reconstruct them into something new.

“This has allowed the work to become more layered and intentional. I’m thinking beyond just making a beautiful image and asking what every gesture, object, pose and compositional decision contributes to the story.”

BB: “In my recent works, I’ve approached them as if I’m doing a multicolour linocut, which has allowed me to place elements harmoniously, giving a nice uniform look while creating depth.”

What story do you hope to tell with your art piece?

FM: “I want the work to feel like a reflection of my life, my upbringing and the people and communities that shaped me. At the same time, I’m interrogating art history, particularly Renaissance art, and asking what those images might have looked like if people who looked like me had been given the same dignity, beauty and monumentality.

“In many ways, my work is about deconstructing history and reconstructing it through my own perspective, placing Black people at the centre of stories where we were historically absent.”

You are trained in painting, drawing and printmaking, and work across oil, acrylic, watercolour, ink and mixed media. How did you ensure that your different ways of creating were represented and still balanced in your piece?

BB: “Within the different mediums that I’ve learned to use, each has come with a certain principle that I keep. For example, when working with ink on paper, all works had to be clean even if the process was messy (which is very aesthetically pleasing). This is one of the rules I’ve applied to the final look of my works.”

How does the surrounding environment and natural landscape influence or inspire your work?

FM: “My environment is a huge part of my work. I grew up in Soweto, but my family history and Venda heritage are also deeply connected to how I see the world. I’m inspired by landscapes, homes, family spaces, people, clothing, textures and even the colours around me.

“But environment for me isn’t only physical. It’s also the music I’m listening to, conversations I’m having, things happening around me and memories from my childhood. Inspiration is everywhere; I’m constantly looking.”

What feeling do you hope audiences get when they view your artwork?

FM: “I hope there is an immediate sense of beauty, dignity and presence, but I also want people to stay with the work long enough to question what they are seeing. I want them to recognise something familiar while also seeing history from a different perspective.

“Ultimately, I want the work to feel human. Even though I’m having a conversation with art history, the people in my paintings come from my world. I want audiences to see Black people represented with tenderness, strength, beauty and the same sense of importance that has been given to figures in classical art for centuries.”

BB: “I want the audience to feel an array of emotions (depending on the piece they are looking at), but the overall purpose is for them to feel like they fit into the piece despite the emotions they’re experiencing.”

The Atlanta Art Fair continues to be a platform for cultural enrichment and artistic exchange. Now in its third edition, the fair takes place from 1–4 October 2026 at Pullman Yards in Atlanta, bringing more than 70 galleries from around the world. gallerymomo.com | theatlantaartfair.com

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WORDS Palesa Mohola PHOTOS Courtesy of OSFHC

Building on the success of OSFHC’s inaugural event, this year’s festival will see over 30 artists exhibiting across 20 studios between Fish Hoek and Clovelly. The all-access art trail will be divided into three routes – Clovelly Route, Fish Hoek Route and Fish Hoek Mountain – and will include partner venues along the trails.

This year’s newcomers

Chris Bladen: a bronze sculptor whose finely detailed sculptures of fish and birds draw on his own fly-fishing and birdwatching experiences.

Mandy Lake: an oil painter with ocean-inspired abstractions.

Angela Buckland: a photographer with work exhibited at the Iziko National Gallery and Durban Art Gallery, and published in three books.

Nicolene Louw: an illustrator with pen-and-ink work as far afield as Switzerland.

Jasper Wolfeman: a multidisciplinary artist with paintings and sculptural floral arrangements.

Along with their artwork, artists have been challenged to create exciting, eco-friendly wine containers, with the public invited to vote for the best one.

What you need to know

The ticketed opening function for collectors and art lovers will take place at AP Jones, a department store on Fish Hoek Main Road, on Friday, 9 October, from 9am to 4pm – guests will be treated to a bespoke installation and live performance. Part of the ticket proceeds will be donated to Project Flamingo, an organisation that provides care for breast cancer patients within the public healthcare system.

The studios will open to the public for free on 10–11 October from 10am to 4pm. A full map with the route guide, studio locations and points of interest, as well as artist profiles and other information, is available online. openstudios.org.za | openstudiosfishhoekclovelly

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WORDS Palesa Mohola PHOTOS Lea Crafford and Nanje Nowack/Courtesy of Southern Guild

As the recipient of Southern Guild’s international residency programme in Cape Town, the GUILD Residency, Simphiwe Buthelezi will present her solo exhibition at the gallery.

Born in Johannesburg, Simphiwe is a sculptor and installation artist whose rise in the art scene began in 2018, when she was awarded the Blessing Ngobeni Art Prize, which led to a residency at The Bag Factory Artist Studios in Johannesburg. Her work has been exhibited around the world, with her wider exhibition history including presentations in Kinshasa, DRC, and Miami, USA.

Her work is rooted in material exploration, cultural continuity, African spirituality and processes of self-discovery. She works with natural materials, including ‘icansi‘ (traditional hand-woven reed mats), glass beads, ‘tankrali‘ (Zulu seed beads), sea sand, seashells and metal. To retain their agency and sculptural integrity, she avoids bright paint, opting instead for natural, earthy tones and letting the materials lead her work.

“My work is always in dialogue with the sacredness of the reed mat,” Simphiwe says. “It fascinates me how a single object can unravel and transform into many forms – just like the people to whom it belongs: boundless, adaptable, enduring.”

She uses a creative process closely related to a practice called ‘ukubuyela e masisweni‘ – or ‘returning to the source’ – an existential and spiritual undertaking through which intergenerational materials become vessels for cultural memory, ancestral knowledge and new forms of meaning.

The new body of work for Kala, whose isiZulu translation is ‘weigh it’ or ‘measure it’, includes the work Mhlaba, the focal form for the exhibition’s central themes. It is a monumental sphere whose surface is layered with tactile constellations built from cut segments of ‘icansi‘, traditional mats hand-woven from ‘iNcema‘ bulrushes – a material that extends beyond its everyday function, as the mats are not only used in domestic contexts but are also used in ceremonies and rituals across South Africa. The artwork appears neither complete nor intact, looking as if suspended in a state between formation and erosion.

Another work, Abacus, is an extensive wall-hung installation made from ebonised, handmade clay beads that shift across a series of open contour lines. Released from the confines of the abacus’s conventional four-sided boundary, the instrument becomes mutable and porous, exposed to forces of motion, time, deduction and addition – transforming an ancient tool of calculation into a distorted meditation on what cannot be counted.

“Ultimately, Kala asks not how we measure the world, but what we choose to measure. It invites an alternative currency of value; one rooted in attention, care, and the belief that making remains a vital way of processing the conditions of the present,” says Simphiwe.

Kala will be on show at the GUILD Residency, Silo 5, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, from 18 September to 12 November 2026. | southernguild.com

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WORDS Palesa Mohola PHOTOS Supplied

The Sasol New Signatures Visual Arts Competition continues to be an instrument for launching the careers of many South African visual artists, offering them an opportunity to showcase their talents and gain significant recognition and exposure within the art world. This year, 938 works were submitted at eight collection points across South Africa, of which 123 were selected to advance to the final round of judging and to appear in the 2026 exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum.

“Sasol New Signatures has provided a vital platform for emerging artists to share their perspectives, challenge convention and take the next step in their creative journeys. We continue to support the arts because we believe that creativity plays an important role in shaping society, encouraging new ways of thinking, inspiring dialogue and helping us better understand the world and one another,” says Nozipho Mlambo, Sasol Senior Manager: Group Brand and Sponsorships.

This September, Sphumelele Zondi, a Johannesburg-based visual artist who works primarily with sculpture and mixed media and holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the University of KwaZulu-Natal and a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art from the Durban University of Technology, came out victorious. Entering for the first time, she was announced as the 2026 Sasol New Signatures Visual Arts Competition overall winner for her mixed-media piece, The laundry of a nation.

“The work draws attention to clothing that carry these experiences, traces of labour, care, hardship, and survival that can become embedded within them. I was also interested in the idea of Abantu bazothini?, the awareness of being watched, judged, or questioned by others, and how this can influence young people from an early age. Through the work, I want viewers to reflect on what they have inherited from generations and circumstances before them, and to question what they are now carrying forward,” says Sphumelele.

Sive Ntombana, a painter and mural artist based in Makhanda currently completing a Master of Fine Arts at Rhodes University, is this year’s runner-up with his work titled Umlandeli.

“This work is informed by a philosophical approach. From this approach, I use Sihle Sogaula’s and Hugo Canham’s thinking of the Black Xhosa home as a space full of theoretical activity. Within the work, I am trying to make sense of the notion of trauma and healing through a reflexive narrative perspective that is informed by theoretical thinking,” says Sive.

Sasol has been a sponsor of the competition for the past 36 years and continues to provide emerging South African artists with a platform to express their unique perspectives and push the boundaries of creative expression.

2026 Sasol New Signatures Visual Arts Competition Winners

• Overall winner Sphumelele Zondi walks away with a cash prize of R100 000 and an opportunity to hold a solo exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum in 2026.
• Runner-up Sive Ntombana takes home R25 000.

The five Merit Award winners receive R10 000 each, and they are:

• Charlie de Bruto – Pretoria, Ball buster, 2026 (Mixed media)
• Inga Lokwe – Pretoria, Qula kwedini, 2025 (Glass, metal, wood)
• Wisani Manyisi – Johannesburg, Dance of memory, 2026 (Mixed media on paper)
• Thomas Masingi – Polokwane, The desire to become one series, 2025 (Digital photography on true ivory)
• Charné Mungur – Gqeberha, Echoes of silence, 2025 (Steel)

The Sasol New Signatures exhibition, featuring the work of the 2026 winners and finalists, will take place at the Pretoria Art Museum from 10 September to 8 November 2026. | sasolsignatures.co.za

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WORDS Neyani Mphephu PHOTOS Supplied (Zani Alberts), Shaun Wagne, Inge Prins (Ashleigh Lloyd), Georgia Dorward, Supplied (Karlien van Rooyen), Supplied (Sinegugu Ngxongo), Francis Marais (Mpho Vackier), Supplied, Inge Prins (Thabisa Mjo), Supplied, (Naledi Modupi), Suly Khan (Bonolo Chepape), Supplied (Keabetswe Seema), Sune van Tonder (Tanisha Neill)

South African women have always been problem-solvers – within homes, communities and cultures. That same ingenuity drives established and emerging designers and artists whose work is rooted in lived experience, heritage and emotional depth. The result is work that speaks from a specific place, earning them recognition at home and abroad.

Here, 10 South African creatives reflect on the ideas, experiences and beliefs behind their practices.

Zani Alberts

Co-founder of DEFT Studios in Gqeberha, Zani is a furniture designer and maker who came to the craft through architecture. She and her business partner, Martin Tallie, established the studio in 2020. Her distinction lies in closing the distance between designer and maker. “There’s a real proudness that comes with being part of the physical fabrication of furniture,” she says. “Not a lot of women are willing to engage in that physical realm of production. For me, design doesn’t happen at arm’s length – it happens on the workshop floor, while it’s being built.”

She believes South African design already meets international standards, and that smaller, more considered workshops frequently produce exceptional work. “Design has become more playful, more expressive, more willing to experiment, and that’s the part I’m most excited to see grow,” she says. “The next generation seems less interested in permission. What I’d really like to see alongside that is more local production. Please stop importing. We have the skill and we have the makers, so the pieces may as well be built here.” | deftstudios.co.za

Ashleigh Lloyd

Founder of Studio Lloyd in Cape Town, Ashleigh creates handcrafted, large-scale sculptural lighting she describes as “future heirlooms”. Being a first-generation South African has shaped her conviction that local design can stand confidently on an international stage. Her move into bronze reflects an instinct for permanence – objects that carry the marks of making and grow into their own histories. She sees a generation moving beyond trends towards work that is “highly individual, technically ambitious and made to last”, and wants South African design recognised “not because it is ‘South African’, but because it is simply exceptional”. | studiolloyd.com

Karlien van Rooyen

Karlien’s ceramic practice emerged from hardship: homelessness, gender-based violence and chronic illness. Each vessel she makes stands as what she calls “a determined and dignified declaration of our personal and collective ability to endure”. Trained in medical science and shaped by years of environmental activism, she sees South African design’s future defined by “uncompromising depth, textural integrity, and grounded social innovation”, with rural materialities elevated globally “not as exotica, but as authoritative voices”. | karlienvanrooyen.com

Sinegugu Ngxongo

Founder of Bambizulu, Sinegugu grew up watching women solve problems for their families and communities. “If something solves a particular problem while also bringing beauty into the solution, for me, that is a tick,” she says. Working with rural artisans in Hlabisa, she speaks of design’s “limitless possibilities” and the responsibility they carry. “I would love to see a future where technology and innovation don’t replace that human knowledge, but help us strengthen it.” | bambizulu.com

Mpho Vackier

Mpho founded TheUrbanative, a furniture and product design studio in Johannesburg, in 2016. She approaches design through cultural interpretation. “It has never been about reproducing those references literally, but about understanding them, interpreting them and allowing them to exist within a contemporary design language,” she says. She sees a shift away from the need to “explain or prove its Africanness”, and is excited by African narratives joining the wider contemporary design canon rather than being viewed merely as inspiration. | theurbanative.com

Thabisa Mjo

Founder and creative director of Mash.T Design Studio in Johannesburg, Thabisa stumbled into design in 2015 when she entered the Nando’s Hot Young Designer Talent Search and won with her Tutu 2.0 pendant light, inspired by Xibelani skirts worn by Xitsonga women. She describes South African women as “collaborative, enterprising, and problem-solving” – qualities she sees as directly transferable to design. “The aesthetic is a result of an approach, a perspective,” she says. “The most interesting design and designers are those with a perspective, and I think that’s what the next generation of really stand-out design will be defined by.” | mashtdesignstudio.com

Naledi Modupi

A Johannesburg-based visual artist and illustrator, Naledi is best known for semi-abstract portraiture that celebrates the beauty and individuality of Black women. Her distinctive style pairs continuous lines with bold, vibrant colour, moving between digital and traditional media. Naledi uses colour as her primary language, telling stories about women with vivid, expressive palettes that feel gentle and confident at once. “I don’t see gentleness and boldness as opposites; I think they can exist beautifully together,” she says. She is energised by the way South African women are asserting their place in the conversation, and excited by the breakdown of boundaries between art, illustration and design. “I’m seeing more and more women coming through, creating their own visual language and making their mark.” | naledimodupi.co.za

Bonolo Chepape

Founder of the textile and lifestyle brand Lulasclan, Bonolo treats pattern as a storytelling tool. Her work has appeared on Nando’s restaurant facades, in Mr Price Home collections, and in the rain | VISI collection, which launched in August. “At the core of my practice is an ongoing exploration of mark-making and pattern as a language that connects people, disciplines, and places,” she says. “I find my tribe in women who choose to remain joyful and full of colour despite sometimes serious working environments.” That generosity of spirit shapes her design thinking too: “My thinking always leans on creating space for women to embrace every part of themselves, their strength, softness, ambition, joy and individuality.” She sees the future of South African design as many voices at once. “It is about allowing many perspectives to exist simultaneously and, through that diversity, creating something distinctly our own.” | lulasclan.com

Keabetswe Seema

Keabetswe works across collage, photography, sound, mixed media, printmaking and installation. She sits at the juncture of Afro-surrealism, Afro-futurism and Black feminist thought, constructing layered visual worlds that collapse archival, personal and imagined narratives. Raised in a matriarchal household, she foregrounds Black women to restore their agency. “They take centre stage time and time again in order to preserve and shift the dominant narratives that have marginalised them previously,” she says. She is excited by immersive world-building: “less items simply on the wall but active embodied engagements from the audience with the art and/or design.” | @_keaseema

Tanisha Neill

A furniture designer, Tanisha grew up surrounded by South Africa’s diverse landscapes and credits her mother’s instinct for interiors as a formative influence. She entered the industry at a moment of growth, with platforms like Cape Town Furniture Week and Design Week South Africa opening new doors for emerging designers. “The more designers look inward, understand their own perspective and build from there, the more distinctive and exciting South African design will become,” she says. Her advice: “Don’t wait until you have the perfect brand, the perfect plan or all the answers.” | nish.design

What connects these 10 women is a shared instinct to look inward before looking outward. Each studio, each practice, each piece is a statement about where South African design has come from and, more importantly, where it is capable of going.

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The post Rooted in Place appeared first on Visi.

WORDS Amy Rusch PHOTOS Jan Ras

Choosing these objects was easier than I’d imagined. They are belongings; I belong to them, and they belong to me. We inhabit the same living and making space. Each is a porthole of access to family, to memory, and to a sense of awe in relation to the living world. Many of the pieces were made, held, worn or formed long before my birth; in many ways, they have added to how I’m able to be who I am. They are valued beyond measure.

Bezoar Stone

Two days aft er my paternal grandmother Sunray passed away, my dad and I went to visit her sister, who said to choose anything from her home, saying she no longer needed “things”. I was immediately drawn to this round stone – which, once I held it, I realised was not a stone at all. Smooth and much lighter, it’s a bezoar stone – a hairball from the stomach of a goat from the family farm. Historically, bezoar stones are thought to have healing properties. A bezoar could be worn as a charm, ground into powder and consumed, or dropped into a drink that’s suspected to contain poison. They can be found in the stomachs of goats, oxen, snakes and porcupines. I feel incredibly grateful to be the custodian of this magical, mystical ball.

Bird-call Instrument

Just before my god-daughter Kino was born, my dad spent several days making and perfecting two little instruments made of wood harvested from a searsia tree growing in the garden. The correct amount of friction and rosin [pine sap resin] makes the wood call out like a bird. One instrument was given to Erin and Nic as a gift for the soon-to-be-born Kino – and in an uncomplicated moment when my dad walked me to my car that same afternoon, he handed me the second instrument. I was very moved.

Ancestral Threads

Receiving the first cotton threads on wooden bobbins from Nouchi, my maternal great-grandmother, was a catalyst. I began experimenting with these threads in high school; they were the access point to a form of expression mark-making using the thread line and imprint. I now have a collection of inherited threads from both sides of the family – a daily material access point to the female makers in my family.

Nana’s Chair

I inherited these chairs from my maternal grandmother Nana. I made new canvas covers for them, and replaced the worn arm strapping with blue rope. I have memories from childhood of these chairs in my grandmother’s home; of family members at the table. I love that they’ve held bodies, conversations, gatherings; that they’ve held family around a table in celebration… and in disagreement. They hold the potential to keep holding, and have been my studio chairs for 10 years.

Ammonite Fossils

These ammonite fossils were given to me and my sister when we were kids by John Parkington, my mother’s stepfather and a professor of archaeology. They are a connection to deep time, to life’s changing cycles, and to archaeology. They are reminders of continuous change, and how matter that feels permeable and fluid can change form, becoming stone under the right conditions. They feel like a starting point from all the way back to my present interest and work in archaeology.

Stone Pine Lino Print

This lino print was given to me by my maternal grandpa Marc, years before he passed away. On the day he passed, I sat watching the evening light change to darkness, the stone pines and the mountain turning from pink to orange to blue, and then to darkness. This is an image that transports me to a memory of a life’s transition – what it means to live a full and present life.

Twin Fish Quilt

My mom made this quilt 37 years ago while pregnant with me. They are the first transmissions I received through her womb – of working with hands and threads; of making in preparation for my birth. I feel that, in some ways, this piece is an early waypoint on the path towards my way of making now. This blanket holds so much of me and who I’ve become. It’s beautiful, and practical, and full of deep symbolism.

Rock Pots

When gardening with my mom about seven years ago, digging in the earth I came across two rocks with holes in their centre. After a good scrubbing, it became clear that these were pottery pieces made by my grandmother, Nana, in 1976. There was something wonderful about finding them buried in the soil in my parents’ back garden – it felt like digging up treasure in a miraculous moment of discovery. There’s still soil that spills out of their centre holes.

Wind Rose Wooden Sea Kayak

Building Wind Rose felt like a rite of passage – a return to tactile, slow and meticulous making. Working on and off, it took me three years to build her, and it was this process that slowly shifted me closer to finding voice, allowing my making way to surface, and trusting that things will find their place in time – and that time is not linear. She was a transition marker, a guide, and a process of learning wooden boatbuilding from my father. Our kayaks – Little Leaf and Wind Rose – are built from the same plans, but slight adjustments that I made to the keelson and the cockpit coaming (the raised rim around the cockpit) make them different. Wind Rose has allowed me to follow ancestral threads of connection to the ocean, seafaring, boatbuilding and navigation. Both boats are built of 3mm Japanese marine plywood, with an Oregon pine keelson, coaming and gunwales.

Nutshell Sailing Boat

My dad built two little wooden nutshell sailing boats during my mom’s pregnancy. I learnt to sail in these boats – they were the porthole and my first interaction with sailing, working with wind, and the craft of wooden boatbuilding. Like the quilt my mom made while I was in utero, I feel that my dad’s process of building these wooden boats transmitted towards a growing Amy. As physical objects, they have been a practical access point to ancestral seafaring, navigation, and interaction with the ocean, rivers and lagoons – but symbolically, they hold so much more. Through both the Twin- Fish quilt and this pair of nutshell sailing boats, I feel very strong ties to who I am in the present, today. | @amy.rusch

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