Form and Surface

This exhibition brings into dialogue the practices of two young African artists who, through different languages and materials, sharply interrogate the relationships between space, politics, history, and everyday life: Pebofatso Mokoena (b. 1993, Johannesburg, South Africa ) and Troy Makaza. (b. 1994, Harare, Zimbabwe).
By juxtaposing their practices, the exhibition foregrounds form, material, and composition as critical tools of inquiry. Mokoena’s controlled spatial systems contrast with Makaza’s materially driven processes of accumulation and weaving. Together, their works articulate a nuanced reflection on the social, political, and global conditions shaping contemporary African art today.

Emerging from an early background in printmaking, Pebofatso Mokoena has developed a painting practice grounded in precise mark-making and a rigorous division of space. His works unfold as visual systems in which micro and macro scales mirror one another: minute details become metaphors for broader structures, while architectures, landscapes, and compositional grids allude to political, environmental, and social dynamics. Mokoena’s paintings do not seek to describe reality but to analyze it, functioning as tools for reading tensions between order and instability, control and transformation. The early local and international recognition his work has received testifies to the strength of a practice that successfully combines formal rigor with conceptual depth.

Trained as a painter yet consistently drawn to form and texture, Troy Makaza has progressively developed a hybrid language that moves beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries. Through the use of silicone—a material that can be cast, painted, woven, and tied—Makaza constructs dense, vibrant surfaces in which painterly gestures intersect with processes reminiscent of weaving and tapestry. Over the past years, his work has evolved into a space for both visceral and philosophical reflection on issues of politics, history, and power, seen through the lens of a young Zimbabwean artist and a globally engaged millennial. Rooted in African visual traditions yet unequivocally contemporary, Makaza’s works actively contribute to redefining what African—and specifically Zimbabwean—contemporary aesthetics can be: a paradigm that is locally grounded and internationally resonant.