At Javett-UP, Kamil Adam Hassim brings frontier science into conversation with indigenous knowledge, mythology and sound to ask what the universe might reveal if we learned how to listen.
9 September 2026
What if the cosmos could be heard rather than observed? ‘String Theory’ is a solo exhibition by artist and cosmo-technologist Kamil Adam Hassim, whose practice moves between art, frontier science and indigenous knowledge systems.
At the exhibition’s centre is String Theory, a functioning particle detector activated by a mythological family of string instruments known as the Sutras. Responding to cosmic rays, ancient particles of energy travelling through space and continually reaching Earth, the work transforms otherwise invisible phenomena into an encounter with sound, memory and ancestral knowledge.
Hassim’s practice considers how different cultural, spiritual and technological frameworks shape our understanding of reality. Here, scientific instrumentation is not positioned against mythology or indigenous ways of knowing. Instead, these languages converge, opening possibilities for imagining relationships between the ancestral and the cosmic, the measurable and the unseen.
Curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, Interim Curatorial Director, together with the Javett-UP curatorial team, ‘String Theory’ invites audiences to expand the limits of perception and consider the universe as an archive of voices, energies and histories still resonating around us.
This exhibition will be on view at Javett-UP, Pretoria, on 17 September 2026.
