Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF) 2025

The gallery’s presentation in the Main section features specially commissioned works by Zanele Muholi, Zizipho Poswa, Andile Dyalvane, Mmangaliso Nzuza, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Ayotunde Ojo and Manyaku Mashilo, as well as paintings and sculptural forms by Jozua Gerrard, Terence Maluleke, Dominique Zinkpè and Chuma Maweni. The gallery debuts a new series of functional bronze sculpture by Stanislaw Trzebinski in the SOLO section and a monumental bronze bust by Zanele Muholi within the fair’s Cabinet/Trophy section.

Southern Guild artist Terence Maluleke will participate in the fair’s Talks Programme as part of a panel discussion exploring “The Role of Digital Media and Film in Contemporary Art” on Saturday, 22 February. The Cape Town gallery will also open an extensive solo exhibition of hand-carved timber sculptures by Beninese artist Dominique Zinkpè, Ejire (Double Rhyme), on Wednesday, 19 February at 6 pm.

Main Section

Booth A4

A new ceramic sculpture by Zizipho Poswa, crowned with stippled bronze horns, is the most recent addition to the artist’s formative iLobola series. Continuing her exploration of the traditional African custom of lobola (bride-wealth), the body of work acknowledges women’s spiritual value and centrality within Xhosa culture.

A new lightbox and a large-scale photographic mural by Zanele Muholi deepen the visual activist’s use of self-portraiture as an impetus for Queer visibility and ever-shifting representation. Muholi will debut a new solo exhibition, Faces and Phases 19, at Southern Guild Los Angeles in May 2025, which will introduce new portraits of participants from Los Angeles, London and São Paulo.

Cape Town-based ceramic artist Andile Dyalvane’s series of hand-carved vessels honour South Africa’s indigenous Umthathi (Sneezewood) tree. The tree is revered as a Xhosa symbol of ancestral protection and generational connectedness with its powdered bark, often ingested as a ritualistic stimulant to bring on clarity and transformation. Through its resilience as a material for the traditional construction of fences and its role in uniting families and communities, Umthathi reflects a profound connection between nature, memory and ceremony.

The gallery will also show a number of new paintings by Mmangaliso Nzuza, Ayotunde Ojo, Terence Maluleke, Kamyar Bineshtarigh and Manyaku Mashilo, as well as an enamel-on-glass painting from Jozua Gerrard’s recent 2024 solo, In the Present Tense. Mashilo’s cosmographic figurative painting was produced at the same time as her newest body of work, The Laying of Hands, which opens at Southern Guild Los Angeles on 13 February 2025. Mmangaliso Nzuza will also open a solo of oil paintings at the gallery’s Melrose Hill outpost in September 2025.

SOLO Section

Booth F6

Kenyan-born sculptor Stanislaw Trzebinski participates in the fair’s SOLO section curated by Céline Seror. One of ten artists invited to take part, Trzebinski has crafted a series of functional sculptures – including standing lights in bronze and a five-panel wall piece in etched brass – that reflect on the section’s theme, “Playscapes: Shaping Worlds and Selves”. His works explore humanity’s tenuous relationship with the natural world. Their organic forms evoke the otherworldly organisms he imagines might reclaim the Earth in the aftermath of climate collapse. Emerging from a dystopian vision, these forms come into being with sinuous vitality—a testament to nature’s unrelenting capacity for regeneration.

The sculptural designs tread the line between functionality and expressive form, blending digital modeling and 3D printing with artisanal techniques such as hand-blown glass and experimental patination. The concept of play is naturally embedded in Trzebinski’s process. “Creating has always felt like revisiting that sense of discovery and nuance I experienced as a child encountering the world for the first time, where awe and wonder are ever present,” he says. “In these moments, the barriers we build as adults come down and creativity and imagination can flow freely – free of the judgments and constructs that constrain us as adults in a conforming world.”

Exhibition Match: Cabinet/Trophy

Curated by Alexander Richards and Dr Phokeng Setai, this special section explores the abundant theme of play, using the symbol of the trophy cabinet to underlie art’s significance as the cultural trophies of our time. Produced especially for this section of the fair, Ziphi I by Zanele Muholi makes reference to one of the visual activist’s photographic self-portraits, Ziphi IV, Cape Town (2020) from their series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness). This ongoing photographic project, first begun in 2012, actively refuses the exoticising gaze. These images serve as acts of defiance, addressing the historical near-absence of Black women and non-binary bodies as represented subjects in Western painting and portraiture before the 20th century. The bronze form monumentalises Muholi’s personhood, lending it literal and metaphorical weight. “The scale is about visibility. It is about being seen, and it is about presence,” the artist shares. The original image captures Muholi in a headpiece, deftly refashioned from a lampshade, while wearing a woven raffia mat repurposed as a stole. The sculpture reconstructs these elements using various textural patinas. Bronze has historically been used to venerate those in positions of power, so Muholi’s choice of the material seeks to harness and complicate that wrought context while speaking to the inherent value of bronze within the wider framework of this imagined Trophy Cabinet. “We know the historical effects of bronze throughout art history, but it has never been done in the Queerest way. I want to make sure that I am expanding the visual narrative by using a different material. Struggle, resistance, and hardship are attached to its hardness,” expands Muholi.

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>> Southern Guild Cape Town: VIP Preview of Dominique Zinkpè’s solo exhibition, Ejire (Double Rhyme)

Wednesday, 19 February, 5-6 pm (followed by Public Opening 6-8 pm)
Silo 5, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town

Beninese artist Dominique Zinkpè’s first solo exhibition with the gallery features a number of large-scale, architectural sculptures and wall reliefs. Their expansive forms are assembled from hundreds of carved Ibeji figurines, materialising the dualism and inter-connection between the self and society. Describing his artistic practice as a form of priesthood, Zinkpè seeks to preserve and animate the Vodun spiritual beliefs at the heart of traditional Yoruba culture.

>> ICTAF Talk: ‘The Role of Digital Media and Film in Contemporary Art’

Saturday, 22 February, 11 am
The Westin (adjacent to the CTICC)

Johannesburg-based painter Terence Maluleke will form part of a panel discussion with Iole Pellion di Persano (Italy), Chidi Nwaubani (United Kingdom) and Marina Paulenka (Croatia) on how digital interventions and technology-based practices are shaping contemporary art on the continent.