‘Unfurling’ marks the seventh chapter in CEC’s ongoing Art Themes series — a curated exploration of contemporary artistic practice across South Africa, the African continent and the globe. This latest theme takes as its starting point the act of opening, both literal and metaphorical. The selected works navigate processes of emergence, renewal, visibility, vulnerability, and material transformation — particularly as they relate to identity, ecological sensitivity, memory and cultural continuity.

The artists featured in this edition — Bronwyn Katz, Nnenna Okore, Buhlebezwe Siwani, and Sungi Mlengeya — span a wide range of disciplines and geographies. What unites them, however, is a shared interest in slow, intentional gestures that push back against dominant narratives and linear conceptions of time and progress. These are not loud, overtly confrontational works — but rather considered, process-driven practices that interrogate the meaning of becoming in a world where identity, politics, and place are constantly shifting.

Set against the backdrop of South Africa’s springtime — a season of ecological and symbolic significance — Unfurling reflects on what it means to begin again, particularly in a context where history continues to weigh heavily on the present. In this context, growth is not naïve or uncomplicated. It is informed by layers of memory, resistance, and lived experience.

Borrowing from the idiom that nature does not forget, this theme considers the act of opening as uncomfortable, liberating and ultimately, necessary.

Bronwyn Katz (South Africa)

Medium: Sculpture, installation, video, performance

​Bronwyn Katz’s multidisciplinary practice is deeply rooted in the political and emotional geographies of land and memory. Working with found and often discarded materials — including bed springs, foam mattresses, iron ore, and wire — Katz investigates the way in which physical space carries the residue of lived histories. These materials are not merely aesthetic choices; they are conceptually loaded signifiers of dispossession, mobility and the tension between permanence and transience.

Katz’s use of abstraction invites a multiplicity of interpretations. Her sculptures and installations often evoke domesticity, rest, and containment, while simultaneously suggesting rupture and absence. These tensions reflect the broader sociopolitical realities of post-apartheid South Africa, where questions of land, identity and belonging remain unresolved.

In the context of Unfurling, Katz’s work can be seen as occupying a space of suspended movement — not quite static, but not fully resolved. There’s a latent energy in her forms, as if they are in the process of slowly unfolding or recomposing themselves. This mirrors the artist’s ongoing inquiry into how spaces — both physical and psychic — are shaped by occupation, erasure and return.

Nnenna Okore (Nigeria/USA)

Medium: Sculpture, fiber art, installation

Nnenna Okore’s practice bridges contemporary art, ecological research and community-based activism. She is widely recognized for her labor-intensive sculptures and installations, which mimic organic growth forms using biodegradable materials such as cheesecloth, bioplastics, paper pulp, and natural fibers. Okore’s tactile works are both materially and thematically grounded in the rhythms of nature — particularly decay, regeneration and transformation.

Her installations often resemble root systems, fungal blooms, coral formations, or other naturally occurring textures and networks. This is not incidental: Okore is deeply committed to raising environmental awareness and uses her work to open up conversations about sustainability, waste and ecological interdependence.

Under the theme of Unfurling, Okore’s work takes on added significance. Her forms are not static; they expand, fray, collapse and regroup — echoing the biological processes of growth and decay. They speak to the interconnectivity of life systems, both human and nonhuman, and encourage a reconsideration of how we relate to our environment — not as dominators, but as participants in an ongoing cycle of emergence and return.

Her forthcoming exhibition Between Earth and Sky opens on 18 September 2025 at the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew — a fitting site for work that exists at the intersection of art and ecology.

Buhlebezwe Siwani (South Africa)

Medium: Performance, installation, photography, video

Buhlebezwe Siwani works primarily in performance and installation, often incorporating photographic and video documentation as extensions of her live work. Her practice is deeply informed by African spirituality, ancestral knowledge systems and the complexities of Black womanhood. Raised in various parts of South Africa (and currently working between Amsterdam and Cape Town) Siwani brings a translocal perspective to her engagement with ritual, embodiment and resistance.

Siwani often uses her own body as a site of inquiry, enacting performances that draw on traditional forms of healing and spiritual mediation. Her work is visually compelling, often stark and elemental, relying on materials such as water, clay, textiles and symbolic objects.

Siwani’s work speaks to spiritual emergence — the unfurling of channels between the seen and unseen, the ancestral and the contemporary. Her performances challenge Western epistemologies by foregrounding forms of knowledge that are embodied, intuitive and relational.

Rather than illustrating a linear narrative, her works operate as ritual encounters — spaces in which transformation is not only imagined but enacted.

Sungi Mlengeya (Tanzania)

Medium: Painting; minimalist portraiture

Sungi Mlengeya is a Tanzanian painter best known for her minimalist, large-scale portraits of Black women, rendered against stark white backgrounds. Her compositions are defined by their restrained color palette and the use of negative space — a formal decision that allows for both clarity and ambiguity.

Mlengeya’s figures often appear suspended, partially rendered or emerging from the canvas, suggesting a quiet yet potent assertion of presence. Her subjects are frequently depicted in moments of rest, contemplation, or interiority — a marked contrast to the often hyper-visible and politicized portrayals of Black women in mainstream visual culture.

While minimalist in style, Mlengeya’s work carries deep conceptual weight. It raises questions about representation, identity, and autonomy. Her use of space is particularly relevant to the theme of Unfurling — suggesting a gradual visibility, an intentional withholding, or an unfolding of self on one’s own terms.

There is a sense of containment in her paintings — but also of readiness, as if her subjects are in the midst of becoming more fully themselves, on their own timelines.

Unfurling, as a thematic lens, allows us to consider emergence not as a singular event, but as an ongoing, complex process. Across media and modes of expression, the featured artists in this edition bring a thoughtful and often intimate approach to the act of opening — whether that be through healing, memory, ecological engagement, or the simple assertion of presence.

What binds these practices is not uniformity, but a shared sensitivity to process, to transformation, and to the necessity of holding space for that which does not arrive fully formed. At a time when immediacy and spectacle dominate much of the art world’s discourse, Unfurling champions slowness, care, and the power of gradual revelation.

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