Exhibition openings, talks, and upcoming events 

Last chance to see

Until Sat, Sep 13 – By bringing the work of Mapula Embroidery Project to Wits Art Museum (WAM), the exhibition 2020 Through the Eye of a Needle: Remembering the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2025 provides a space for reflection on the strange times of Covid. From the absurd: spraying oneself with sanitiser and not being able to find any toilet paper, to the heartwarming: cue the penguins taking over Simonstown, and all the other aches, pains, and joys we all went through. WAM has created a number of ways for the public to engage in this process of remembering. Add your own mark to the exhibition before it closes. Read our review.

More art highlights

Until Fri, Sep 19 – Guns & Rain's Unresolved: Memory, Protest & Waiting is a group exhibition featuring artists Nicola Brandt, David Brits, Christo Doherty, Tuli Mekondjo, Jo Rogge, and Ina-Maria Shikongo. With a special focus on Namibia, Unresolved explores the themes of memory and protest through the eyes of six contemporary Namibian and South African artists, drawing parallels and new perspectives from their intersections.

Until Fri, Sep 26 – With Smiso Cele announced as the winner of the Cassirer Welz Award 2025, Bag Factory Artists' Studios and Strauss & Co will celebrate the creative path of the winners to date with the group exhibition Trajectories at Bag Factory Artists Studios.

Until Sat, Sep 27 – Guy Du Toit's playful hares take over Everard Read with his exhibition Hare Necessities. The sculptures highlight Du Toit's mastery of form, and their wonderful simplicity allows us to imprint our own experiences of love, solitude, and the rituals of everyday life.

Until Sun, Sep 28 – An installation series at Museum Africa, Fashion Accounts reimagines how we collect, archive, and create memories through fashion objects. Curated by fashion designers and curators Wanda Lephoto, Erica de Greef, and Alison Moloney, it also considers the absence of black South African fashion histories in traditional museum collections. Says Lephoto, "It is in the gaps, the absences, the fragments that we need to look to find ourselves when our stories are not acknowledged in the record."

Until Tue, Sep 30 – The exhibition SouthSeen in the Atrium at Keyes Art Mile kicks off its run in South Africa after Limani Gallery's successful exhibit at Belfius Bank in Belgium. With artists working across a range of mediums, the exhibition is a showcase of South African talent and highlights the vibrancy and innovation of South African art.

Until Tue, Sep 30 – Keyes Art Mile's Gallery 1 space hosts the group exhibition Thorned. Bringing together a host of South African greats, the exhibition explores how, in the feeling of pain, there is also love and beauty. See how artists Wim Botha, Alexis Preller, Judith Mason, Cecil Skotnes, Cecily Sash, Helmut Starcke, and Jackson Hlungwani transform their pain through their art.

Until Tue, Sep 30 – Lizamore on Keyes' group exhibition, Dusk, brings together artists whose practices –be it painting, drawing, or digital – explore atmosphere and "the emotional tones that emerge in moments of pause."

Until end September – Latitudes Centre for the Arts presents its third annual Women’s Month exhibition, Skin, curated by Boitumelo Makousu and Denzo Nyathi. Skin uses the body’s largest organ as both subject and metaphor, a living threshold between inner and outer worlds. The works explore how identity is shaped by both interior and exterior forces, reflecting on memory, rest as a radical act of reclamation, and the ongoing negotiation between subjecthood and objecthood in a world that is always watching. Featuring artists Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Farhana Jacobs, Mira Jaan, Lerato Ntili, and Kerri Liebovitz.

Until end September – ALX Art Gallery brings a solo exhibition by gallery owner Azael Langa in celebration of the gallery's first birthday. Titled Let Down Your Nets, the exhibition draws from the biblical call to cast into faith, using it as a metaphor for the courage and trust it takes to create and build, and to trust the unseen. 

Until end September – Ada-Ruth Kellow's solo The Braai Master at Lizamore at The Firestation, Rosebank is perfectly timed for the change in season. As Kellow turns her attention to a familiar ritual in South Africa, she presents the braai as a mirror of society and reveals the social and power dynamics at play. 

Until Thu, Oct 2 – Head to 44 Stanley for the gallery's exhibition Flatland: Drawing Depth. Flatland brings artists and printing studios together who transform flat images into emotive and immersive spaces, exploring the question: "How can we find depth in simplicity, and space in flatness?". Featuring works by 50ty/50ty Prints, The Artists' Press, Roxy Kaczmarek, Io Makandal, Thobile ‘Sana King’ Mavuso, Thanduxolo Nombali Phakathi, and Fiona Pole.

Until Sat, Oct 4 – Notes in Flight, Olivia Pintér's first solo with David Krut Projects, opens at The Blue House. Pintér's works capture feelings and moods from places and moments, with her abstraction being a way to articulate "sensations that are felt but not fully understood." The exhibition features new paintings as well as monotypes made in collaboration with printer Roxy Kaczmarek.

Until Sat, Oct 4 – TOOR|BOS at Gallery 2 is one of those exhibitions that needs to be seen in person. Curated by Dineke Orton, head curator at UJ Art Gallery, the project brings together leading creative voices to merge visual art, poetry, music, and VR (virtual reality) into an immersive artistic journey. Featuring artists Willem Boshoff and Jaco van Schalkwyk, poets Quaz Roodt and Bibi Slippers, VR specialist Dr Herman Myburgh, and composer Dr Jaco Meyer. 

Until Thu, Oct 16 – The Meaning of Home at Origins Centre is a showcase of works created in collaboration by art therapist Kate Shand and ceramic artist Nina Shand with children from the educational project Three2Six. Over 70 raku-fired porcelain vessels are shown alongside tactile clay sculptures by migrant children, collectively exploring home as a place of memory and belonging. The latest run of the exhibition includes two new additions: Leaving No Child Behind, a powerful photo series by Three2Six & Alliance Française, and Doll’s Building and City Project, a Victorian doll’s house, transformed into a South African context by Windybrow Arts Centre.

Until Fri, Oct 17 – The Roger Ballen Centre for Photography opens with its debut exhibition PSYCHOPOMP!. Curated by Berlin-based artist Boris Eldagsen, the exhibition explores the role of AI images as a mirror to the subconscious mind. Bringing together over 20 artists who use AI as a tool "to interrogate their fears, their shame, and their psychic leftovers", the exhibition explores the new frontiers of creativity, which technology is rapidly disrupting. Admission is R50.

Until Sat, Oct 25 – Neo Matloga brings new paintings to Stevenson Gallery for his solo exhibition Tomorrow is Another Day. In Tomorrow is Another Day Matloga works across painting, collage and monotypes to weave together moments of daily life between Johannesburg and his home in Mamaila. The quiet moments that he captures emphasise stillness, and the artist says of making works for the exhibition "where photography captures a moment, painting chases it. I try to hold that breath a little longer, painting as if the camera were embedded in the pulse of my hand."

Until Fri, Oct 31 – South African icons Willie Bester and Pitika Ntuli's work comes to the Melrose Gallery with Junkyard Dogs, an exhibition curated by Tumelo Tumi Moloi and Ashraf Jamal. A powerful confrontation with legacy, reclamation, and survival, the exhibition brings fresh perspectives from two stalwarts of art in South Africa.

Until Sat, Nov 1 – Artist Serge Nitegeka returns to his alma mater for his first solo in Johannesburg, Black Subjects at Wits Art Museum. Working across mediums from painting to film, the undoubted highlight is a large-scale and walkable sculpture that takes over part of the gallery. 

Until Sun, Nov 2 – Discover the Sasol New Signatures 2025 winning artist, finalists, and shortlisted artworks in a spectacular group showcase at the Pretoria Art Museum. With more than 100 works selected from across the country, this is the best way to get a glimpse into the future of South African contemporary art. Alongside, Miné Kleynhans, winner of Sasol New Signatures 2024, presents her solo Augury After Autogogues. Kleynhans uses interactive sculptural works to explore mysticism and truth in a time where we are often overburdened with information. 

Until Sat, Nov 15 – Structures forms the second part of Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation's Worldmaking series. The exhibition sees the featured artists, architects, and the team at JCAF use research, technology, and art to explore the relationship between humans and the built environment. Comprising a trilogy of exhibitions, Structures will be accompanied by talks, walkabouts, publications, and more episodes of JCAF's podcast series, Knowledge Talks. Book a guided walkabout here.

Until early 2026 – Johannesburg Art Gallery, in collaboration with First Floor Gallery Harare, present Sugar Coats – Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude’s first solo exhibition at the museum, following his award of the 2024 FNB Art Prize. In Sugar Coats, Nyaude tackles the disempowerment of the youth, bringing into play the vestiges of colonialism which still entrap Zimbabwe, skewed systems of justice, and a culture of consumerism.

Until April 30, 2026 – One and the Many at Javett-UP brings the old and the new together. This group exhibition will explore the way in which artists navigate the relationship between the individual and the collective. By bringing leading South African contemporary artists into dialogue with the collections at Javett-UP, it promises to be a fascinating exhibition that "aims to open up different possibilities for reading images and artwork." 

Ongoing – NIROX Sculpture Park and the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's exhibition Villa+ the next generation is an ambitious project across their grounds and interior spaces looking at the work and influence of Edoardo Villa. Featuring sculptures by Nicholas Hlobo, Willem Boshoff, William Kentridge, Serge Alain Nitegeka, Jane Alexander, Jackson Hlungwani, and Walter Oltmann, as well as 35 of Villa's works, the exhibition is "a conversation across generations, rooted in sculptural mastery, innovation and cultural diversity".

Save the date

Wondering what else to do this week? Read our weekly events guide here. For our latest updates, follow us on Instagram.