The Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF) continues its Worldmaking trilogy with an exhibition on how we build, dwell, and remember in a world shaped by histories of displacement, resilience and invention.
Following ‘Ecospheres’ (2024), which reflected on the natural world and our entanglement with it, the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF) now turns its attention to the built environment with ‘Structures’ – the second exhibition in its ambitious three-year programme under the theme of Worldmaking. Running from May 31 to November 15, 2025, the exhibition explores how structures – both physical and intangible – inform and reflect the worlds we inherit and inhabit.
Curated by JCAF’s Executive Director, Clive Kellner, ‘Structures’ brings together a dynamic group of artists and architects from across the Global South whose practices probe the political, poetic, and spatial dimensions of architecture. Through sculpture, installation, photography and sound, they examine how the place is made and remade through memory, labour, ideology, and imagination.
“At the heart of these concerns lies a central question: How have indigenous forms of artistry, tradition and knowledge contributed to architecture and everyday life in the Global South—more especially in a South African context?” says Kellner.
The exhibition is organised into three thematic sections—Situatedness, Infrastructures, and Typologies—each unfolding different aspects of the relationship between people and place.
Situatedness: Memory, Migration and the Imprint of Place
This section examines the interconnection between identity, heritage, and displacement in relation to spatial experience. Artists such as Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Hajra Waheed, Jellel Gasteli and Kader Attia examine how memory is embedded in the places we leave and the ones we build anew.
Gasteli’s minimalist photographs of light and shadow in Tunisia offer a meditative counterpoint to Attia’s materially rich investigations into postcolonial repair and fragmentation. Waheed’s work charts global histories of movement and exile, while Bineshtarigh’s experiments with translation and mark-making echo the layered surfaces of cities shaped by many tongues and temporalities.
Infrastructures: Architecture and Power
From monuments and informal settlements to state buildings and invisible systems, Infrastructures explores how architecture operates as a tool of power and a canvas of resistance. This section features works by David Goldblatt, Kiluanji Kia Henda, Matri-Archi(tecture), and Hélio Oiticica.
Goldblatt’s photographs of South African buildings – often mundane, sometimes monumental – trace the slow violence of apartheid-era spatial planning. In dialogue, Kia Henda’s installations deconstruct the symbolic architecture of nationalism in Angola. At the same time, Matri-Archi(tecture), a women-led collective working across South Africa and Switzerland, proposes alternative spatial futures rooted in feminist and decolonial approaches to design. Meanwhile, a reconstructed walk-through installation by the late Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica invites visitors to engage the body as a mode of spatial understanding.
Typologies: Ritual, Craft and the Intimacy of Space
The final section reveals how architecture extends beyond concrete and steel into the textures of daily life – through pattern, rhythm, ritual and craft. Here, the line between structure and art becomes porous.
Igshaan Adams’s tactile weavings incorporate elements of Islamic geometry, personal memory, and the “desire lines” that carve paths through Cape Town’s contested urban landscape. The Johannesburg-based collective MADEYOULOOK contributes Dinokana (2024) – a powerful sound installation originally commissioned for the South African Pavilion at the 2024 Venice Biennale. Drawing on oral histories, the work reflects on the Bahurutshe people’s displacement under apartheid and their enduring connection to the land.
Beyond the Gallery Walls
‘Structures’ also presents several special projects that expand its inquiry into public and symbolic spaces. These include interventions by Wolff Architects, Rebecca Potterton, and Stephen Hobbs, which consider the resonance of sites like Constitution Hill and the Union Buildings in South Africa today.
One of the most unexpected inclusions is a model city made entirely of couscous – a sculptural homage to Algeria’s cultural heritage and a commentary on fragility, nourishment and the impermanence of built form.
Across the exhibition, the idea of “people as infrastructure” – a concept introduced by urban theorist AbdouMaliq Simone – resonates strongly. As visitors move through immersive installations and soundscapes, they encounter architecture not only as an object but as a living process shaped by migration, memory, community and care.
A Place for Slow-Looking
JCAF is known for its rigorous, research-led exhibitions and its commitment to slowing down the way we experience art. Housed in a refurbished modernist building in Forest Town, Johannesburg, the Foundation combines an academic institute, a technology lab, and an exhibition space in one. It does not maintain a permanent collection but curates around a three-year thematic cycle—in this case, Worldmaking (2024–2026).
‘Structures’ continues JCAF’s mission to foster deep, critical engagement with contemporary art in a reflective environment. Visitors are encouraged to explore the works at their own pace, aided by touchscreen technology that offers insights into the research, architecture and curatorial thinking behind the exhibition.
The exhibition is on view from May 31 until November 15, 2025. For more information, please visit the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF).
