From iconic public artworks (discover a few of our favourites), intriguing street art, and established galleries and museums, to trailblazing indie spaces and the hardworking artists' studios in the city centre, Johannesburg is a city for art lovers. We update this guide weekly to help you navigate these ever-changing creative spaces, from a curated selection of solo and group shows, artist-led walkabouts, and workshops, to guided tours, and other art-related events worth your while.
Art picks of the week (Thu, Feb 19 – Thu, Feb 26)
If you're an avid follower of our weekly exhibitions blog, you'll notice that it has a new look. And, if you're new around here, welcome! We hope that you'll be back again for our picks of the must-see exhibitions in Joburg. Here, we profile new exhibitions alongside worthwhile shows that you might have missed. Our catch-all list of exhibitions currently showing in Joburg can be found below.1. Imagine Visionary Animals at Origins Centre
If you haven't taken a trip to Origins Centre to see Icelandic artist Erla S. Haraldsdóttir's exhibition Imagine Visionary Animals, it's a must. The site-specific exhibition takes place in Origins Centre's new wing, and Haraldsdóttir responds to both the surfaces of the room and research done on a trip to new rock art sites in the Cederberg, Western Cape.
Speaking on the works, Haraldsdóttir says, “The paintings explore the interplay between space and light... This shifting light mirrors our constant movement through space as the Earth orbits the sun, continuously altering the colours and illumination we perceive in a painting.” The resulting works shift one's spatial perception while also being a symbolic exploration of how stone surfaces were people's first canvases (and, frustratingly for parents, still might be for the creative toddler).
2: Intersections: Bill Ainslie and the Johannesburg Art Foundation at Wits Art Museum
While you're in the vicinity, we recommend strolling across to Wits Art Museum (WAM) for the show Intersections: Bill Ainslie and the Johannesburg Art Foundation, a beautiful tribute to one of the city's most radically influential artists. Read our review.
3. There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) and After Material at FADA Gallery
Photo: ARAK Collection.
Last week saw the launch of 10 new publications from the ARAK Collection at Strauss & Co, nine of which stem from the ARAK Curatorial Fellowship. You can see two of the exhibitions from the fellowship at FADA Gallery with There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) and After Material. Curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula and Max Diallo Jakobsen, respectively, the exhibitions bring new ways of looking at works in the ARAK Collection.
Aboulaoula focuses on abstraction and the different modes of being and thinking that it represents, while Diallo Jakobsen looks at materiality and how the use of found objects is more than a choice of medium in contemporary African art, but is an archive in itself, with the objects carrying their own weights and histories.
4. Residuals – A study in flesh, form and fracture at Asisebenze Art Gallery
Photo: Imbewu Collective.
An excellent complement to Diallo Jakobsen's exhibition is Residuals – A study in flesh, form and fracture at Asisebenze Art Gallery. In Residuals, artist Thokozani Mthiyane observes the devastating consequences of nyaope addiction working across paint and sculpture. Many of the works incorporate needles and other items which Mthiyane collected over his four-year study in Joburg's City Centre. Read about our visit to Mthiyane's studio.
With a short film screening and discussion on Sat, Feb 21 at 10:30, there isn't a better time to dive into these loaded and poignant works.
More Joburg art highlights
SEE BEFORE THE END OF FEBUntil Fri, Feb 27 – With GAIA, Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts at Wits Art Museum showcases artists' books that reflect our place in the world and our responsibility towards it.
Until Fri, Feb 27 – Through contemporary artworks, archival material, and performance, Nkosi Sikelel’ iAzania at Museum Africa examines apartheid’s deep roots and long shadows, focusing on land, space, and resistance.
Until Sat, Feb 28 – In Residuals – A study in flesh, form and fracture at Asisebenze Art Gallery, Thokozani Mthiyane reflects on the social realities of Johannesburg's CBD with an unflinching look at the crisis of nyaope addiction.
Until Sat, Feb 28 – A group exhibition leaning into moments of transition, Winds of Change at Resource Gallery reflects on the personal and collective shifts that unsettle, challenge, and reshape us.
Until Sat, Feb 28 – Denzil's & Jo collaborate with Exhibition Through Music for In 9 months a child of love is born, a show that asks you to slow down and experience the beauty that comes from love made visible.
SEE BEFORE THE END OF MARCH
Until Fri, Mar 6 – Holding Isihawu at Artyli Gallery gathers eight contemporary African artists to look at how black history is an ongoing process made real through art.
Until Sat, Mar 7 – Portrait Shift sees Eric Duplan rework the language of portraiture at Gallery 2 with works that resist fixed readings.
Until Sat, Mar 7 – Goodman Gallery brings two special exhibitions by Guy Simpson and Hank Willis Thomas. Was Here sees Guy Simpson mapping the changes to Johannesburg since his youth, while Hank Willis Thomas probes memory, shared histories and connections with Forever Now.
Until mid-Mar – Icelandic artist Erla S. Haraldsdóttir creates portals that connect symbols and experiences across millennia at Origins Centre with Imagine Visionary Animals.
Until Fri, Mar 20 – Wits Art Museum revisits the radical legacy and lyrical abstractions of Bill Ainslie with Intersections: Bill Ainslie and the Johannesburg Art Foundation. Read our review.
Until Fri, Mar 20 – David Krut Gallery gets its 2026 programme going with two exhibitions that explore making, desire, and process. Untitled Excursion Series marks Blessing Ngobeni's first venture into intaglio printmaking and he translates his energetic, physical approach to drawing onto copper plates. Phumulani Ntuli looks at the surreal ways desire is shaped in the digital age with Wish List.
Until end March – Gallery MOMO's Summer Group Show is a dynamic exhibition across modern and contemporary art featuring Tega Tafadzwa, Vivien Kohler, Dumile Feni, Velaphi Mzimba, and others.
Until end March – Palimpsest at Lizamore on Keyes brings together photographer Michael Meyersfeld and painter-musician Stompie Selibe in a dynamic meeting of practices alongside new works by Lien Botha, Nellien Brewer, and Jacki McInnes.
Until end March – Below the Surface at the gallery is a group exhibition across print and mixed media where marks become shifting traces of touch, movement, and memory.
SEE BEFORE THE END OF APRIL
Until Fri, Apr 10 – FADA Gallery and the ARAK Collection collaborate for two exhibitions stemming from the ARAK Curatorial Fellowship.
In After Material curator Max Diallo Jakobsen examines how artists work with materials already loaded with social, political, and economic histories treating matter as both medium and archive.
And in There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of), Soukaina Aboulaoula approaches abstraction as a language that carries histories, memories, psychic states, and cosmologies.
Until Sun, Apr 12 – What happens when the stewards are gone? In Modiši wa go botega, Setlamorago Mashilo takes the figure of the shepherd at Constitution Hill and asks hard questions about leadership, care, and responsibility in our communities.
Until Thu, Apr 30 – One and the Many brings leading South African contemporary artists into dialogue with the collections at Javett-UP in a fascinating examination of the old and the new that "aims to open up different possibilities for reading images and artwork".
SEE BEFORE THE END OF JULY
Until Fri, Jul 31 – A brand-new art space, A42 House opens its doors with Grounded, a co-created exhibition shaped by voices in Johannesburg reflecting on home, belonging, and place. Keep an eye on A42 House's Instagram for talks, workshops, and other pop-up events.
Ongoing – NIROX Sculpture Park and the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture place works by Edoardo Villa alongside other South African sculptors to explore the legacy of the artist with Villa+ the next generation.
Save the date
Opening Thu, Feb 26 at 18:00 – Bag Factory Artist Studios kick off their 35th anniversary celebrations with Maungo, a showcase of the many artists who have moved and created within the studios.Opening Sat, Feb 28 at 11:00 – Jason Langa, Chevy Noir, and Khumo Ramaila track how memory, emotion, and history inscribe themselves on the human figure in Imprints of Presence at Lizamore at the Firestation.
Opening Sat, Feb 28 at 12:00 – Internationally renowned fashion photographer Koto Bolofo leads a public walkabout of Fashin_The Image, an exhibition at Roger Ballen Centre for Photography tracing the evolution of fashion photography in South Africa and its relationship to identity, authorship, and global visual culture.
Photo: Michael Oliver Love.
Opening Thu, Feb 26 – Drawing on decades of engagement with Africa’s wilderness, Paul Augustinus' paintings for African Refugia at Everard Read Gallery are painstakingly detailed depictions of places beyond human reach.
Opening Thu, Mar 5 – Resource Gallery presents Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery, a group show that celebrates those that reject limiting beliefs, narratives and boundaries to imagine anew.
Opening Sat, Mar 7 at 11:00 – Candice Berman Gallery at 223 Creative Hub brings new work from Shana Ellappa and Restone Maambo. Shana Ellappa treats the sugarcane fields of Kwa-Zulu Natal as living archives of indentured labour in The Field as Witness. And in Prowess, Restone Maambo's paintings highlight the power of endurance and self-possession.
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