It’s that time of the year again! The National Arts Festival (NAF) has announced its 2023 programme, which is now live and open for online bookings. Makhanda’s annual celebration of the arts will be taking place from 22 June to 2 July 2023 where artists,
Public holidays aside, the month of April felt as if it blew by in the space of one very busy week. But it was not without its highlights. On a Tuesday evening in early April, Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg offices in Houghton play host to
Moffat Takadiwa is a Zimbabwean artist famous for creating work from found materials. His exhibition Vestiges of Colonialism, curated by Fadzai Muchemwa, opened at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe on 16 March. This is the 40-year-old Takadiwa’s first solo show in Zimbabwe in a decade. Having exhibited around the globe, he’s best known
The artist El Anatsui was born in Ghana and has spent the bulk of his career in Nigeria, but is a citizen of the world. News of a major new installation of his work coming to the prestigious Tate Modern gallery in London is just one in a string
The cultural and creative industry in South Africa has seen substantial growth over the last 10 years, with more people participating across the various activities of the value chain. The creative industry does not only offer benefits from an economic point of view but can
The Embassy of Japan recently announced that applications are now open for the 17th International Manga Award. This prestigious competition celebrates the Japanese comic book and graphic novel, manga, and artists from around the world are invited to submit their applications by 7 July 2023.
Entries are now officially open for the annual Sasol New Signatures Art Competition 2023. For the past 33 years, the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition, founded by the Association of Arts Pretoria in the 1960s, has been a beacon for unbridled creativity and artistic exploration
On a Wednesday night at The Market Theatre, someone is blowing a whistle too loudly. There is no fire, no emergency, no sense of panic. Rather, as we wait to show our tickets to the ushers and file into the Mannie Manim theatre, faces scrunched
The inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale is underway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. (Biennales are large and prestigious international art exhibitions held every two years.) This important new event for the Muslim world features numerous African artists. And the biennale’s artistic director is Sumayya Vally, a South African architecture professor and principal
In a new episode of Africa Avant Garde, CNN explores the importance and value of participating in international art fairs, following several African galleries and artists as they prepare for and participate in Miami Art Week. According to South African artist William Kentridge, who expresses
Johannesburg-based artist Bulumko Mbete is the winner of the 2023 Cassirer Welz award. The announcement was made at an evening ceremony at Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg offices on 4 April. The selection jury comprised of Bag Factory director Maria Fidel Regueros, Zinhle Zwane and young
Grass is currently growing in Johannesburg’s Standard Bank Gallery. There’s fresh soil and a body of water, too. These materials, installed as part of Buhlebezwe Siwani’s solo exhibition iYeza, have a profound effect on the brick and mortar building they occupy, as well as those
Landscapes of memory, labour and mobility are central to the work of Wezile Harmans. Through performance, installation and mixed-media works, the artist has grappled with these core themes over a number of separate exhibitions and residencies. Now, in Do Not Trust The Borders, his latest
The Standard Bank Gallery is currently exhibiting iYeza, a solo exhibition of recent work by Buhlebezwe Siwani. First exhibited in Makhanda, as part of the National Arts Festival, the exhibition now moves to Johannesburg in celebration of a significant milestone – the artist’s selection as
Wake Up, This is Joburg is a collaboration between photographer Mark Lewis and urban planner and writer Tanya Zack. Striking images and beautiful texts follow 10 stories the team discovered in urban Johannesburg, South Africa. Each chapter captures many overlapping stories that come together around
Interdisciplinary artist Wezile Harmans opens his solo exhibition DO NOT TRUST THE BORDERS at the UJ Art Gallery on 16 March 2023. Developed from his original exhibition at the Bag Factory in 2022, DO NOT TRUST THE BORDERS focuses on the challenges of migration and
“What’s happening here tonight?” asked the Uber driver as I climbed into his car, escaping the howling wind and chatter outside the Cape Town Convention Centre.It was shortly after 21:00 and the 10th annual Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) had just wrapped up its
Step into a brighter world at the highly anticipated fifth edition of Spier Light Art, hosted at Spier Wine Farm in Stellenbosch from 10 March to 10 April 2023. The annual festival is an interactive, nocturnal adventure in the Spier Wine Farm gardens, featuring experimental
Where the spirit is connected to the world, the unconscious mind carries with it an ecological wisdom. To embrace the shadow is the journey of the sun and the soul is an exhibition that seeks to identify what sustainability means within an African ideology. Taking
The rumours are true. We Will Rock You, the hit musical set in a dystopian future and supercharged by the music of Queen, is coming to South Africa. This new iteration of the internationally renowned musical is choreographed and directed by award-winning British director, Nick
History, culture, heritage, and familial connections reveal who we are as human beings. This notion is at the heart of O Mang? O Tswa Kae? O Ya Kae?, on exhibition at Johannesburg’s Constitution Hill from 4 February to 27 March 2023. O Mang? O Tswa
We are hostages to time, strange times, times that encompass many possibilities and unfold in many directions. How to make time in these times when there is no time. No time to look, really look, and thereby see. No time to read, only time to
Norval Foundation and The Sovereign Art Foundation have announced Famakan Magassa as the Grand Prize Winner of the 2023 Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (NSAAP). The Malian painter won for his work La Ballade Noctambule, an acrylic on canvas work that NSAAP describes as using
South African history and ecology serve as points of departure in RAIN SHADOWS: A SOUNDSCAPE, a new experimental collaboration between contemporary artist, Chrisél Attewell, and composer and musician, Wesley West. The album is made as part of Attewell’s upcoming Master’s exhibition, RAIN SHADOWS, that will
And we’re back! Welcome to 2023 and to what we hope will be another extraordinary year for the arts. To help kickstart your year in art, we’ve put together a list of what’s happening in the realms of South African theatre, visual art, music and
“We own our own stories. We determine the narrative and how it must be told. We reframe the context within which our stories have been shared, viewed, and heard. Listen Again!, the exhibition invites you to consider the ways in which we contribute to (or