Part of the 2025 Young/Unframed programme, the exhibition is curated by Abongile Matintela and explores cultural lineage, self-discipline, and diasporic belonging
Daneel Thumbiran, Almost, 2025. Mixed Media Prints Matt paper 130gsm, 1 of 3 variable edition. Courtesy of the artist.
In ‘Brahmacarya’, on view at Bag Factory from 7 to June 28 2025, South African Indian artist Daneel Thumbiran transforms a philosophical concept into a profoundly personal and textured visual journey. The exhibition takes its name from the first of four stages of life in Hindu tradition—brahmacarya, a time devoted to learning, self-discipline and inner growth.
Curated by Abongile Matintela as part of the Young/Unframed programme, this body of work is Thumbiran’s first engagement with the concept in an artistic context. Through mixed media wheat-paste pieces and fragments from his art books, the artist examines what it means to seek identity and spiritual grounding within a South African Indian context that is both visible and invisible in the contemporary art landscape.
“The idea of being almost but never quite—of never seeing ourselves fully represented—runs through my work,” says Thumbiran. His collaged surfaces reflect this liminality. Drawing from both sacred iconography and urban visual culture, he overlays tradition with reinterpretation. Wheat-pasting, often associated with graffiti and public interventions, becomes a tool of reclamation: the sacred rendered uncontained, unframed, public.
As a descendant of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa, Thumbiran’s work explores themes of displacement, heritage, and spiritual longing. He doesn’t attempt a fixed answer but instead offers layered images that embrace multiplicity—avatars, stories, and fragments that exist all at once. His collages resist singularity, much like the diasporic identity he inhabits.
Matintela’s curatorial approach amplifies this openness. With a background in political science and art history and a practice shaped by movement between provinces, languages and cultures, Matintela brings an attentiveness to fluidity—across time, space, and identity. “Curation, like art-making, is a process of listening,” they note. “To histories, to communities, to what remains unsaid.”
While ‘Brahmacarya’ draws on a religious concept, it does not attempt to illustrate it didactically. Instead, Thumbiran uses the idea as a metaphorical scaffold—inviting viewers to reflect on their periods of learning, constraint, evolution and purpose. The result is not just an exhibition but a dialogue between the artist, curator, and audience—each bringing their own beliefs, questions and memories to the space.
In a country where South African Indian visual narratives remain largely underrepresented, Thumbiran’s work is both intimate and political. It insists on being seen not as a monolith but in its layered, hybrid, and complex searching.
‘Brahmacarya’ is part of the third edition of the Young/Unframed programme, an initiative supporting early-career artists and curators through residency, mentorship and collaborative exhibitions. The National Arts Council of South Africa funds the project.
The exhibition will be on view from June 7 to June 28, 2025. For more information, please visit the Bag Factory Artist Studios.
