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'Restoration of Sight': A pop-up group exhibition presented by the Tilga Foundation
4 Feb 2026 (2 min) read
“Restoration of Sight brings together artists who challenge dominant ways of seeing, inviting viewers to expand and retrain their gaze. The exhibition frames looking as an active process shaped by context, material, and encounter.”
Tilga Foundation presents Restoration of Sight, a salon-style, pop-up exhibition curated by Mpumi N. Mayisa. Marking five years of the Tilga Art Prize, the exhibition, to be held in the Southern Guild Warehouse in the Port of Cape Town, brings together works by South African finalists from the 2022 and 2025 editions of the prize. The exhibition runs from 17 February (official opening on 18 February between 4 and 7PM) and will run until 22 February 2026.
Rather than positioning the gaze as authoritative or extractive, Restoration of Sight proposes a softening and reorientation of how we look. Across painting, installation, performance, and material experimentation, the artists introduce narratives that are often overlooked, peripheral, or quietly held — asking viewers to slow down, to linger, and to remain attentive to subtle shifts in form, rhythm, and feeling. The exhibition foregrounds seeing as an active process: one that is learned, unlearned, and continuously expanded.
Presented in a dense, salon-style format, the works are placed in close dialogue, encouraging associative reading rather than linear interpretation. Here, sight becomes relational — shaped by adjacency, rhythm, and conversation between practices. In this way, the exhibition reflects Tilga’s ongoing commitment to nurturing artists whose work resists singular readings and instead opens space for multiplicity, vulnerability, and speculative ways of knowing. Restoration of Sight is both a reflection and an invitation: to encounter contemporary practice with greater sensitivity, to remain open to what emerges at the edges of vision, and to recognise the ongoing labour of learning how to see differently.
The eight participating artists include Athenkosi Kwinana, Abongile Sidzumo, Buqaqawuli Nobakada, Brian Montshiwa, Keabetswe Seema, Hannah Macfarlane, Lindani Nyandeni, and Zama Cebsile Mwandla.
“The Tilga Art Prize is a philanthropic arts initiative dedicated to identifying, supporting, and elevating promising emerging artists across Africa," explains the founder of the foundation, Wole Bakare. "Restoration of Sight reflects our commitment to fostering critical artistic voices and building spaces where new perspectives can emerge and endure.”
The exhibition is presented on a non-commission basis, with all artworks being offered in direct support of the artists who receive 100% of the proceeds.
Images – All courtesy of the artists and the Tilga Foundation
Top row: Zama Cebsile Mwandla, Artist portrait; work by Buqaqawuli Nobakada.
Keabetswe Seema, Artist portrait; work by Brian Montshiwa
Below:
Work by Hannah Macfarlane; Athenkosi Kwinana, Artist portrait
Work by Lindani Nyandeni; Abongile Sidzumo, Artist portrait
