Khanyi Mawhayi in conversation on opacity, intergenerational memory, and the unstable ground of belonging.
20 March 2026
‘A Protea Is Not a Flower’ unfolds as an intergenerational dialogue that traces the shifting contours of exile across South African histories and diasporic imaginaries. Bringing contemporary artists Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode into conversation with Gerard Sekoto, Bessie Head, and Don Mattera, the exhibition reflects on displacement not only as geographic rupture but as a layered condition of memory, identity, and survival. Borrowing its title from Mattera’s evocative metaphor, the protea emerges as a symbol of endurance and dispersal—rooted yet scattered, indigenous yet global—mirroring the trajectories of artists whose lives have been shaped by both forced and chosen forms of exile. Across time, medium, and geography, the exhibition probes what it means to belong, to be severed, and to reimagine connection beyond the limits of nation and home.
In this conversation, curator Khanyi Mawhayi speaks with Brendon Bell-Roberts about the conceptual and spatial strategies underpinning the exhibition, reflecting on opacity, horizontal curation, and the tension between symbol and lived experience. What emerges is a meditation on belonging beyond nationalist romanticism, where identity resists coherence and where the protea, far from a singular sign, becomes a prism through which histories of displacement, desire, and futurity are refracted.
Installation views, A Protea Is Not a Flower by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode. Photos: Slater
Studio, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
Brendon Bell-Roberts: The title ‘A Protea Is Not a Flower’ proposes a refusal embedded within a symbol so often mobilised to stand in for South Africa. How did this provocation shape your curatorial framework for the exhibition?
Khanyi Mawhayi: The title came from the Don Mattera poem, Protea… In the poem, Mattera shows how complex it is to use a symbol to represent a country’s ideals. By saying the protea is not a flower, Mattera asserts that it not only stands in for the positive attributes of a country but also the negative parts of it. The provocation helped the curatorial team understand the complexities of exilic experiences, how the pain that forces one into exile does not negate the exile’s love for a country. If a protea is not a flower, then the term exile can also be broadened to encompass multiple experiences, whether internal, like Mattera’s, voluntary, like Gerard Sekoto’s, or political, like Bessie Head’s.
Installation views, A Protea Is Not a Flower by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode. Photos: Slater
Studio, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
The protea carries botanical, national, and metaphorical weight. How do the participating artists complicate or unsettle this emblem as a fixed signifier of identity?
The participating artists’ biographies lend their identities towards Glissant’s idea of the opaque. Each of them has a dynamic relationship with South Africa, as evidenced in their work. Sekoto had to leave for Paris to pursue his artistic career, and yet he constantly returned to images and events happening in South Africa in his paintings. Mattera was banned and arrested, and yet his poetry displayed an unwavering commitment to the future of South Africa. Head lived an incredibly untethered life in South Africa, and the characters in her books are constantly searching for a place to connect to. Shadi and Rhode grapple with the unrealised promises of a democratic South Africa by playing with physical and historical perspectives, conceptually and materially.
Installation views, A Protea Is Not a Flower by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode. Photos: Slater
Studio, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
The exhibition gestures toward slippage between image and meaning, symbol and structure. How did you approach the spatial choreography of the show to sustain this tension?
It was a blend of curatorial intuition and a deep understanding of and engagement with the artworks. We had many conversations with contemporary artists, and we delved into the archives of 20th-century artists. Spatially, we, the curators, wanted to show the duplicity of exilic experiences. The incredible production team at the museum, led by Julia Kabat and supported by Arafa C. Hamadi, understood this curatorial premise and designed the galleries to maintain this tension. The stark red, the rich purple, and the dazzling yellow help bring out the best parts of the artworks. When it comes to the new commissioned works, Rhode and Shadi helped us create two sides of the coin of exile. It was Rhode who figured out what he wanted to make first, referencing the isolation of Don Mattera, and Shadi took her cue from there and from the life of Bessie Head.
Installation views, A Protea Is Not a Flower by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode. Photos: Slater
Studio, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
Many of the works resist easy categorisation, materially and conceptually. How did you navigate coherence without flattening the distinct urgencies of each practice?
The curatorial methodology of horizontal curation, as well as working closely with contemporary artists to write about and think through their work, is how we foregrounded the distinct practices. Each of the curators, myself, Dr Greer Valley, Inshaaf Jamodien and Bulelwa Kunene visited the archives of the artist we chose and built a close relationship with those who speak for them. Our curatorial responsibility was closely held, with an understanding that the nuances and slippages would make for a coherently complex exhibition.
Installation views, A Protea Is Not a Flower by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode. Photos: Slater
Studio, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
The protea is often romanticised within nationalist iconography. How does the exhibition confront or reframe this romanticism within contemporary discourse?
The protea is an incredibly beautiful flower, but it is not one-dimensional; it does not romanticise itself. It needs fire to spread its seeds, and it is named after a god who had to go into hiding to protect visions of the future. By recognising these attributes of the protea and through Mattera’s poem, the exhibition takes a sober look at the realities of inhabiting spaces in ways that colonial borders intended to disrupt. An intergenerational conversation between artists who had gone through proverbial fire to protect a future that the contemporary artists would enjoy. Nationalist iconography is an important part of nation-building; it creates the illusion of a clear identity for all peoples of a nation, but the work and the artists in the exhibition refuse a singular, transparent identity, understanding that a liberated experience of this world belongs to each of us.
Installation views, A Protea Is Not a Flower by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode. Photos: Slater
Studio, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
How do you see ‘A Protea is Not A Flower’ contributing to broader conversations within African curatorial practice about symbolism, land, and belonging?
One of my favourite quotes in the exhibition is by Robert Sobukwe in a letter to Bessie Head, which reads, “I refuse to be a refugee anywhere on this continent (Africa). How can I, when all of it is mine?” The hope is that the exhibition leads to a rejection of colonial nationalist pride that keeps us divided as a continent, and to imagining what it would mean to be tethered to a place beyond surface-level symbols that attempt to dictate belonging.
Installation views, A Protea Is Not a Flower by Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode. Photos: Slater
Studio, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA.
Looking beyond the exhibition’s immediate context, what critical questions do you hope audiences carry with them after encountering this reframing of a seemingly familiar form?
If a protea is not a flower, then what is it? In other words, how can we shift our perspectives on seemingly obvious ideas? Hopefully, audiences reflect on their approach to colonial ideas of borders and belonging. As the exhibition proposes intergenerational conversations, I trust that the audience will see that each generation has its own challenges. What challenges does your generation face, and what has it created for the next?
This exhibition is on view at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town until the 15th of November 2026.
