September 26, 2025 - October 16, 2025
274 Preller Street, Muckleneuk
Thresholds of Knowledge Thresholds of Knowledge, curated by Prof. Nombeko Mpako, is a multidisciplinary exhibition held at the UNISA Art Gallery in fulfillment of the Master's and Doctoral Program of the Department of Art and Music.
Thresholds of Knowledge integrates implicit, codified, and tacit knowledge through the linking of numerous artistic bodies of work by Master's and Doctoral candidates: Sango Filita, Wadzanai Tirimboyi, Bongani Ntombela, Karabo Aphane, and Reinhard Sonntag. From fine art to film, installation, sculpture, and performance, the exhibition references notions of commemoration, disruptions of contemporary trends in cinematic culture, encounters between art and science, and philosophies of resistance while observing the culture of migration on the African continent. The exhibition connects various artistic interpretations while interrogating historical archetypes and paradigm shifts by noting altered topical issues and observing detailed fragments of wide-ranging subject matter.
The term "thresholds" in this exhibition represents distinct points of entry into critical junctures in learning, where transformation is presented as a shift in the modality of knowledge and understanding through the observation of core ideas in media, politics, memory, epistemic violence, passage, and the Anthropocene. The crossing of the threshold suggests a deeper, more flexible comprehension of existing ideologies while developing progressive, illustrious visual interpretations.
The exhibition Thresholds of Knowledge further employs the use of indigenous languages as a dynamic system, transferring unique intrinsic knowledge by actively transforming exhibited artworks into sites of dialogue as they echo diverse notions of various lived experiences. The artists craftily explore concepts through the applied arts and performance, proposing a radical conveyance in the modes of science, movement, corruption, violence, and the systematic setting of South Africa's political and socio-economic landscape.
Through interactive artistic installations, we are presented with informed perspectives that embrace the historical and emotional significance of presence while illuminating the duality of existence. Centering moments of conception relative to our experiences and integrating evolving attitudes toward a post-colonial and post-African understanding, the exhibition Thresholds of Knowledge adopts an inquisitive mindset that fosters action, growth, and development through deep-seated interventions, further advocating for a reimagination and reprocessing of contentious concepts in social culture.
SANGO FILITA
UMBULELO ONGAZENZISIYO (2025)
The exhibition entitled “Umbulelo Ongazenzisiyo”, meaning thanksgiving with deepest gratitude, is drawn from the Xhosa word for expressing appreciation and gratitude. In Xhosa culture, Umbulelo is an act of appreciation and often marks life’s journey and significant achievements. Although it is not always in all formal cultural thanksgiving ceremonies, Umbulelo in Xhosa culture often includes traditional elements such as spiritual blood ritual, in which the thanksgiving is marked by the sacrifice of livestock, the brewing of traditional beer and celebration. It is usually a communal event, open to all, and shaped by each family’s means. While it may appear ceremonial, its deeper meaning lies in the ancestral communication and spiritual gratitude it embodies.
This exhibition adopts the concept of Umbulelo Ongazenzisiyo as a way of giving thanks and honouring those who played vital roles in South Africa’s political struggles, with a specific focus on black heroes and heroines from the Eastern Cape. The project seeks to commemorate individuals who, in the researcher’s view, have not received the recognition they deserve post-1994. At the heart of this exhibition are two key historical figures: Enoch Mgijima and Nongqawuse. Both are remembered for their prophecies and spiritual leadership, even though without hullabaloo. Their efforts were aimed at protecting the Xhosa people from colonial ideologies and the systematic dispossession of land and cattle. While their prophecies were widely doubted or even hijacked to the detriment of their people, the case of Nongqawuse during their time, this exhibition recognises their resistance and the spiritual dimensions of their leadership. They are honoured here as symbols of cultural defiance and resilience. The medium chosen for this commemoration includes postage stamps, once a powerful tool of communication and now a relic of the past. These stamps often featured romanticised images of Xhosa life, selectively showcasing only the pleasant aspects of daily activities. They carried both practical and symbolic value, just like the individuals being commemorated in this exhibition. Over time, as digital communication emerged, stamps lost their utility but gained historical and emotional significance. This transformation mirrors how society has undervalued and forgotten some of its own leaders. By repurposing stamps as a medium, the exhibition reveals untold and undocumented stories and narratives overlooked by mainstream media and historical discourses. These visual reinterpretations offer a space to reflect, honour, and preserve memory.
Some of the works in this exhibition may be emotionally challenging or even unsettling. This discomfort reflects the experience of the artist-researcher during site visits and fieldwork. It is not intended to offend, but to awaken a deeper appreciation of where we come from, and a renewed gratitude for those who carried the burden of the struggle, whether politically or spiritually. Although stamps are no longer in active use, they remain preserved and valuable, much like the heroes we remember in Umbulelo Ongazenzisiyo. May this exhibition serve not only as a tribute but as a call to restore value to those whose sacrifices made our present possible.
WADZANAI TIRIMBOYI
MUTORWA ASI (2025)
There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonise the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend. — James Baldwin, 1972
The exhibition ‘Mutorwa Asi’, 2025, meaning “But a Foreigner” is a body of work that relays the radical transformation and contends a need for a fresh African perspective that embraces the evolving attitudes towards post-Africanism and adopts a more receptive mindset that fosters agency, acceptance, innovation, progress, and development. According to Hall, cultural identity is a matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’; hence, the artist identifies with being and becoming, a voice that can never be silenced. Taking ownership to practically think through art and cultural production.
In this exhibition, the artist used the historical and current emigrants' lived experiences to think through the production of the work’s narrative. The work titled ‘Mutorwa Asi’ reflects dual moments: the ugly and beautiful, and not quite here nor there, daily uncertainties of being topical. A reflection of untold pain, burden and successes in the mind of the artist as she decides to have agency and tell the story of herself and other fellow artists in Diaspora. The body of work uses deconstruction and construction techniques, and metaphoric installation language to re-imagine, re-process and re-universalise art and cultural representation in migration.
The artist evokes historic manifestations, current scenarios and possible universalities of art and cultural expressions to foreground overlooked beauties, unrepresented voices of those dealing with colonial overload, emigration crisis, literal and metaphoric trauma and how to be and become beyond crude and subtle boundaries in societies. To transcend life challenges, the voices beam across the void of alienation and the crackle of a conflicted society. This body of work exhibits the marginalized, excluded and oppressed voices erased by the dominant nucleus. In the quest for greener pastures, the artist is in-between spaces and in a place, playing multiple roles. This multiplicity and overlap is often a resemblance of migrants as they navigate through life away from home.
The artist's creation, once a student migrant, now an economic one, is shaped by her daily encounters. The body of work is an installation that depicts liminality with agency and authority, a visual narrative to tell historic, current and possible mutations. The concept and method of being and becoming, though lost in the emigration chaos, simultaneously depict embracing both the negatives and positives at once towards a celebration of being different and taking power in an uneven society. This exhibition is grounded in a deep belief in artists as the vital creators and interpreters of the societal ecosystem and catalyst for possibilities. It proposes a radical reconnection with art’s creations and role in society: that is, the emotional, the visual, the sensory, the affective and the subjective. The exhibition is built on universes of imagination, whose practices seamlessly bleed into society, accommodating daily life as part of a logical and aesthetically consistent relation of parts. Artists who are exceedingly generous and hospitable to life, acknowledging complexities of Africa’s past, present and future in a globalised world
Look at the creole garden, you put all species on such a little lick of land: avocados, lemons, yams, sugarcanes …plus thirty or forty other species on this bit of land that doesn’t go more than fifty feet up the side of the hill, they protect each other. In the great Circle, everything is in everything else (Édouard Glissant, 1993)