Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Thembeka Heidi Sincuba

Creator

Thembeka Heidi Sincuba

Buoyant: Zakes Bantwini opens up about the sounds that saved him, the genres he helped shape and the festival experience he’s building for South Africa. Photo: Supplied

Zakes Bantwini on pain, praise and the power of Dance Music

Zakes Bantwini opens up about the sounds that saved him, the genres he helped shape, and the festival experience he’s building for South Africa

Fak’ugesi 2025 turns South Africa’s digital paradox into a creative power surge, spotlighting African innovators who are rewriting the global tech narrative

Glitching the future at Fak’ugesi Festival

Fak’ugesi 2025 turns South Africa’s digital paradox into a creative power surge, spotlighting African innovators who are rewriting the global tech narrative

Sculpture under the sun: A talk around Angus Taylor’s Morphic Resonance was held during the BMW Art Generation Vol III at Nirox Sculpture Park last weekend. Photo: BMW Group South Africa

A day of art, vibes and black joy

BMW Art Generation fused music, fashion and community ambiance in an event that outshone traditional notions of art

Township child: Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse will perform at BMW Art Generation Vol III on 30 August at the Nirox Sculpture Park in Johannesburg. Photo: Arthur Dlamini

Hotstix, hot legacy

From Burn Out to BMW Art Generation, Sipho ‘Hotstix’ Mabuse remains a cultural giant shaping South Africa’s sound and spirit.

Consuming passion: Nolan Oswald Dennis’s installation garden for Fanon, in which earthworms turn a book by 20th-century political philosopher Frantz Fanon into soil. Photos: Anthea Pokroy

The garden that eats Frantz Fanon

Artist Nolan Oswald Dennis’s installation turns theory into soil, questioning who gets to decide what’s important — and why

What does it mean to truly take your time? Artist shows us through a devotion to detail that transforms everyday materials into meditations on life, loss and transformation

Walter Oltmann and the alchemy of wire

What does it mean to truly take your time? Artist shows us through a devotion to detail that transforms everyday materials into meditations on life, loss and transformation

Martine Jackson shapes clay to document emotive journeys, such as Silent Resolve

Clay Formes and the resurgence of African sculptural traditions

Olivia Barrell’s gallery and book reclaim clay’s place in art history, grounded in care and curation

Siyazila: Siyababa Atelier and the sacred syntax of style

Mtshali’s latest collection renders death not as absence, but presence — grief draped in beauty, ritual and defiance

Woven with meaning: Works from Senzeni Marasela’s show Waiting and Remembering, recently on at the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture Gallery at the University of Johannesburg.

Ukubekezela: Mapping a fractured terrain

Senzeni Marasela’s ‘Waiting and Remembering’ uses her alter ego, Theodorah, and textiles to explore themes of loss, memory and black South African womanhood

Hanging in the balance: Years of neglect and mismanagement have led to the decay of the Johannesburg Art Gallery building in Joubert Park, threatening its priceless collection.  (Photo by Gallo Images/Fani Mahuntsi)

In the Shadow of the Gallery: Art, power and the fight for Johannesburg’s soul

Johannesburg Art Gallery’s decay reveals deeper cracks in South Africa’s cultural and political institutions

The revolution will be printed.

Print isn’t dead, it’s decolonised: Inside SA’s emerging zine scene

Youth zines form a movement reclaiming black narratives and cultural space

Freida Lock, Slave Quarters, Spier Farm, Stellenbosch / A Cape Dutch Homestead (back), 1946. Oil on canvas. (Courtesy of the Javett Foundation, Pretoria)

The politics of guilt and the violence of the archive

During the lockdown, artists must rethink their place in the system. Now is the chance to advocate and appreciate the human condition of being constantly and chaotically in flux