Join us for a conversation with curator Emilie Demon and artists Vuyo Mabheka, Alice Mann, and Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo about the exhibition, their work, and the city of Johannesburg.
Exhibition open from 5:30 PM
Conversation: 6:30 – 7:30 PM
Pay what you can (€ 2 – 5 – 8 – 12)
In English
Vuyo Mabheka (b. 1999, Libode, Eastern Cape, South Africa) is a Johannesburg-based artist working with photography, collage, and drawing to explore memory, identity, and township life.
His series Popihuise reimagines childhood with a poetic lens, earning him the Grand Prix Images Vevey Special Jury Prize (2023/2024) and a place on the British Journal of Photography’s “Ones to Watch 2024.” Mabheka has shown his work internationally, including a solo exhibition at the Paris Photo Fair 2024, the Images Vevey Biennale (Vevey, Switzerland), and an upcoming solo show at the Foto Industria biennale in Bologna, Italy, this November.
Alice Mann (b. 1994, Cape Town, South Africa) is a South African photographer whose work explores identity, youth, and empowerment. Her acclaimed series Drummies<span portrays allfemale drum majorette teams, reflecting on aspiration in post-apartheid South Africa.
She won the 2018 Taylor Wessing Prize, the 2019 Hyères Grand Prix, and the 2023 Belfast Photo Festival Spotlight Award. Mann's work has been exhibited globally, including at the National Portrait Gallery, Rotterdam Kunsthal, and Paris Photo. Her monograph Drummies was published in 2021, and her work was featured in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Vogue France, Wallpaper and British Journal of Photography.
Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo (b. 1993, Soweto, South Africa) is a Johannesburg-based photographer who uses his parents’ tavern in Lawley as a studio to explore trauma, violence, and memory. A member of the Of Soul and Joy Photo Project since 2016 and a graduate of the Market Photo Workshop, he won the 2019 CAP Prize for his series Slaghuis I.
His work has been exhibited at Fotomuseum Winterthur (Winterthur Germany, 2019). In 2020, he held his first solo show Slaghuis II and won the 2020 Blurring the Lines international award. He also received the Gisèle Wulfsohn Mentorship in 2019.
Emilie Demon is a Franco-Japanese curator whose transnational background is matched by a deep commitment to contemporary African art. After beginning her career in the film industry in Tokyo, she discovered African contemporary art in 2007 through the exhibition Africa Remix, which led her to settle in Johannesburg. There, she developed public film screenings and a multidisciplinary practice that bridges cinema, photography, performance, and literature. In 2012, she joined AFRONOVA Gallery alongside the late Henri Vergon, supporting a new generation of South African artists engaged with questions of identity, history, and representation. She has collaborated with numerous international institutions, including the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Smithsonian. Since 2017, she has been active in the mentorship program Of Soul and Joy in Thokoza, and in 2023, she founded Cinema TAKE, a collective that promotes cinema as both an art form and an educational tool.
