Adele van Heerden (b. 1989) is a Cape Town-based artist whose work in painting and photography explores the phenomenon of the ‘waterbody’ and moments in-between. She holds diplomas from Ruth Prowse School of Art and the University of South Africa. Her solo exhibitions include Mirror (2024) and Oceanic (2023).

Arlene Amaler-Raviv is an experienced painter from South Africa whose works have been exhibited both locally and internationally. Moving several times across many cities and countries, her work is influenced by themes of displacement, transition, and relocation. Amaler-Raviv paints the human condition through her blend of figuration and abstraction, producing emotionally charged paintings that represent larger political themes.

Ayanda Mabulu is a self-taught artist whose work focuses on social upheavals and matters affecting the politics of the black body. He currently lives and works in Jo- hannesburg. Mabulu is best known for using hyper-realistic imagery in his paintings and sculptures to depict and juxtapose powerful leaders, masters, and mistresses with common African traditional people. Tackling the issues of inequality through his experiences in South African society, especially those that set the black body as an area where violence occurs, Mabulu is an internationally recognized South African artist. The discourse of power, culture, and identity arranged in narrative sequences that fur- ther exaggerate the already grotesque history of exploitation and its inheritance in postcolonial African states. Mabulu’s narrative is exhibited daily in the minds of his people and dances on their tongues during conversations that seek to rebuild the global African community

Bongani Mabulu, a self-taught visual artist, was born on October 28, 1988, and raised in a township in the Eastern Cape, specifically King Williams Town. Having pursued his school studies in Cape Town from 2007 onward, he completed high school at “Nompendulo High” in 2008 and decided to embark on an art career. Under the mentorship of his brother, Ayanda Mabulu, also a visual artist, Bongani’s artistic journey began to unfold. His initial studio experience commenced at the renowned Greatmore Studios in Cape Town in 2013. In 2016, he relocated to Johannesburg, establishing his workspace at Victoria Yards. The turning point in his exhibition career came in 2017 when he participated in a group show at Maboneng with Meagan, selling most of his artworks directly from the studio through client visits.

Chantal Coetzee is anartist,feminist historian, speakerand radio presenter, based inCape Town.She obtained her degree in Fine Art fromthe University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1987.Since graduating,shehas explored the realm of installation art in Amsterdam, street art in London, runningvarious galleries in Cape Town, andparticipated in numerous exhibitions both locally and abroad. Workingcollaboratively withfellow artistand curator, Sharon Peers,she co-founded The SeeffTrust ArtGalleryandlater3RDiGALLERY,both in Cape Town

Clint Strydom is a talented South African photographer, lens-based artist and photo essayist with a profound gift for capturing humanity. His lens-based artistry unravels the hidden perspectives of the overlooked or forgotten in society, resulting in work that is timeless, measured and still.

Fathema Bemath, born in 1971, spent the early years of her childhood around Diagonal Street, Johannesburg. The cosmopolitan landscape of Johannesburg town in the early 1970s piqued the curiosity of individuals with a deep appreciation for art. Fathema and her family relocated to Lenasia, a more insular society that considered art to be an indulgence, potentially subversive and anti-religious.

Born in Polokwane, Limpopo in 1997, Frans Moshimanyana Thoka is an emerging contemporary artist. He attended and obtained his BA in Visual Art from the University of Johannesburg; however, he regards himself as a self-thought artist. Thoka’s work revolves around the concept of being humane, or rather, common humanity in a shared universe, and reinforces the need for dignity and kindness. Thoka’s artistic approach is personal, reflecting the trials and tribulations of his upbringing. He uses references to prison and Basotho blankets as his medium, which emphasizes the bare necessities available and reminds the onlooker of the reality of the marginalized.

I am an architect and artist based in Cape Town, South Africa. I use various techniques to explore and document expressions of power in the urban landscape. My work scrutinizes the legacies of failed utopian visions and the shadows cast by laws, societal structures and urban development. I am preoccupied with the patterns that underlie our cities, obscured by the myopia of day-to-day existence: masked by the glitz of developments and the creep of securitised precincts; ignored by the clustering of suburbs and the ebb and flow of traffic; pushed aside by our own fears and prejudices.

As a result of the socio-political unrest caused by the First and Second Sudanese Civil Wars, Hussein Salim, along with million others, was forced to flee his native Sudan and spend a number of years as a refugee in countries like the UK, Germany, Egypt and South Africa. His work, characterised by its use of vibrant colours, the layering of intricate patterns and the impasto painting technique, describes his journey of displacement while celebrating his homeland’s diversity and multicultural communal root. 

Karla Nixon, born in 1990, spent her early childhood on a sugarcane estate in Swaziland before relocating to Durban, South Africa. She is a Durban based artist who predominantly works with paper. She hand-cuts, tears and sculpts intricate images and objects, drawn from her surrounding environments. She has used this medium to explore a multitude of themes each with underlying notions of Space and Place. Although paper is central to her practice she works across disciplines with painting, sculpture, mixed media, collage, video, and installation.

I have been working for six years with a collective of young Durban-based artists that promotes hard work and solidarity amongst fellow artists- the Amasosha Art Movement. During Covid19, I built my studio at home in Cato Manor. I have been working in my studio, creating a body of work because, as a full-time practising artist, it is a must for me to create.

Cape Town-based Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi is a painter and multimedia artist. He has won numerous international awards and artist’s residencies at Djerassi in California, Thami Mnyele in Amsterdam, Sacater in Brazil, Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany, and IESPIS in Malmo, Sweden. He has collaborated with dancers, performing artists and musicians, exploring the genesis of his paintings through movement and sound. He is represented by Barnard Gallery in Newlands, Cape Town.

Ndabuko Ntuli (b.1975) in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Ntuli is a Multidisciplinary artist,producer, sangoma, musician and spiritualist. Being born and raised in the Zulu heartland of Kwa-Zulu Natal and moving to Johannesburg at a young age, Ntuli has already enjoyed a storied and diverse career. His proud Zulu heritage informs his art, each piece never quite being the same as the last whether it is painted, sculpted, made from discarded materials or drawn.

My body of art is called Anansinisim. it was inspired by the Ghanaian mythical character kweku Anansi. Anansi is an Akan name given to the spider. I carefully fuse visual networking designs of the spider with historical Ghanaian Adinkra symbology to creat personal transitional designs on the body that re-eco knowledge and wisdom of our ancestors that are gradually loosing their sustainable values and norms to contemporary audiences. I represent them with tales of great women here in Ghana and deities alike.

Paballo Majela is a young emerging South African artist based in Pretoria. Majela was born in the Free State, QwaQwa 1990. He is currently completing his Btech in Fine Art at Tshwane University of Technology. During 2016 he was part of the TUT/NHP-NPC National Heritage Mentorship Programme. Majela’s maquette was one of three works modelled to life size; which is now part of the National Heritage Monument. The mentorship programme also included the transfer of advanced flexible mould making skills, which facilitated Majela moulding the life size figure he produced. In 2017 he worked along with 2 artist by the name of Kgaogelo Mashilo and Zelda stroud in making of the OR Tambo the sculpture that was installed at the OR Tambo international airport. His specialties are Drawing and Sculpture and currently a student assistant at tut.

Pitika Ntuli was born in 1940 in Springs and grew up in Witbank in Mpumalanga. While a teacher, artist and critical thinker living under the threat of apartheid in the sixties and seventies, Ntuli was forced into exile in Swaziland and arrested and made a political prisoner until 1978, when international pressure forced his release to the UK. Having already completed an MFA at Pratt Institute in New York in 1977, he finished  an MA at  Brunel University in London, in 1985 after which he lectured art at various international and South African universities including; Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Wits University. He was an artist in residence in the 1980s and ‘90s at schools and colleges in London

Raja Oshi is a Sudanese artist now living in South Africa. Graduated from the College of Fine and Applied Art at the Sudanese University of Science and Technology in Khartoum in 1994, her journey of diaspora, and that of her family, has taken her through Norway, Wales, France and Egypt. From 2004 to present, she has settled in Pietermaritzburg where she completed a postgraduate diploma in Fine Art from the Centre for Visual Arts at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in 2006, raised a family and has continued to paint.Raja’s work is inspired by her life context and what is happening in the world. Living in Sudan, her early work depicts the situation of Sudanese women and things going on in their lives. Being part of this moved her and this came out in her paintings. Her work from that period carries the pain and the desire to change things. Her recent, depicts a new moment. 

Willie Bester is cited globally as one of South Africa's most important resistance artists. He incorporates recycled material into his paintings, assemblages and sculpture, creating powerful artworks that speak against political, social and economic injustice. For Willie, the personal is political, and being apolitical in South Africa is “a dangerous luxury that we cannot afford”.