A collaborative studio-based exhibition offers rare public access to the creative spaces of Ellis House, bridging private practice and public engagement
Amohelang Mohajane, Untitled, 2025 . Mixed media, dimensions variable. Installation. Courtesy of the artist.
There is a quiet intensity to a working artist’s studio—the scent of oil paint, the scattered sketches, the traces of process left behind. In these intimate spaces, often hidden from public view, a new collaborative exhibition seeks to begin a different kind of dialogue between artists and audiences.
Presented by Studio Senzeni Marasela in collaboration with Imba Ya Sarai Gallery, this studio-based exhibition opens the doors to creative spaces typically reserved for the private act of making. Rather than relocating works to a traditional white-cube setting, the initiative invites visitors directly into the studios themselves—spaces that are raw, lived-in, and integral to the conception of contemporary art. Doing so encourages a more nuanced engagement with the artistic process, while reimagining the boundaries between exhibition and everyday practice.
Studio Senzeni Marasela is based within Ellis House Art Studios, a five-storey hub for contemporary artists in New Doornfontein, Johannesburg. Established in 2012 by Ian Blacher, Ellis House offers private studio spaces for over 30 artists and supports various artistic disciplines. The building features exhibition and workshop areas, audio-visual facilities, and fosters an artist-led ethos that prioritises collaboration and experimentation.
Imba Ya Sarai Gallery, also based in Johannesburg, is recognised for its dedication to showcasing contemporary African art. The gallery has played a key role in advancing the careers of emerging and established artists across the continent and beyond, focusing on creating platforms that promote critical engagement and cultural visibility.
Bringing together works by artists Thabo Sekoaila, Khaya Sineyile, Belmiro Jemusse, Amohelang Mohajane, Treasure Mlima, and Joseph William Kachinjika, the exhibition presents a constellation of practices that reflect the diversity of contemporary African expression. Through painting, sculpture, mixed media and installation, these artists examine questions of identity, memory, heritage, and the socio-political conditions that shape daily life. Their work resists easy categorisation and insists on multiple voices, materials, and interpretations.
The decision to situate the exhibition within working studios offers a rare glimpse into the environments where these practices take shape. Rather than presenting finished pieces alone, the exhibition incorporates the surrounding traces of creation—tools, notes, drafts, and discarded experiments. This framing demystifies the artistic process and places the viewer closer to the rhythms, challenges, and intuitions that animate each work.
The approach also invites a reconsideration of the traditional roles assigned to artists and audiences. In place of distance and detachment, the exhibition fosters intimacy and curiosity. Visitors are encouraged not only to look, but to observe, to notice, to ask. The presence of the studio itself becomes a collaborator—an active element in the storytelling of the work on display.
As a model, this kind of studio-based exhibition signals a shift toward more accessible and process-driven modes of engagement. It challenges prevailing notions of where and how art should be encountered and prompts reflection on the institutional structures that have long governed visibility in the art world.
Ultimately, the exhibition speaks to a desire for a deeper connection between artists and audiences, creation and interpretation, between the private and the public. Foregrounding the studio as subject and setting opens space for dialogue, vulnerability, and discovery.
This is not simply an invitation to view art, but to step into the conditions of its making. In doing so, I want to experience contemporary art not as a finished product but as an unfolding process—alive with possibility.
The exhibition will open on the 24th of May, 10:00 am. For more information, please visit Imba Ya Sarai Gallery.
