In Terrains of Memory, she moves towards abstraction and works with folded organza, allowing the material to shape the direction of the work.

Chloë Reid writes:

“Kekere-Ekun’s pieces on show are made with organza that holds a sharp accordion fold. The orderly, repetitive lines of the material contort and churn on the surface of the work, lending it a topographical quality. Dense, distorted areas contrast with softer, quieter movements.”

The transition from paper to fabric has also changed the artist’s process. Instead of planning every element before beginning, she works more intuitively and allows uncertainty to enter the studio.

Kekere-Ekun explains:

“The process always starts with the material, the colour. It’s instinctive. The fabric in its plain state has to elicit some kind of emotion, to spark something in me - curiosity or even anger. If it does, I will engage the fabric in a kind of conversation. It’s a bit like I’m collaborating with the fabric. It feels like with every step I’m asking the fabric a question - I’m talking to it. The material is a witness, participant and record keeper.”

This less controlled process reflects a changed relationship to the personal histories that shaped her earlier work.

“My hope with this new work is to be able to express what it looks like when you’ve already looked your trauma in the eye. I’m trying to explore a different relationship with memory, compared to what shaped my earlier practice.”

For Kekere-Ekun, Ctrl+Z does not imply erasing the past. It suggests the possibility of returning to it differently.

“It’s not like I’m trying to disavow my history or what I’ve come from. It’s more like I’m approaching memory from a different place,” she states. 

“Anything that is in my mind, anything I imagine, I can put it into a picture. I can change it up; I can morph it into anything... painting has this almost infinite possibility with it.”

Writing about his practice, Nkgopoleng Moloi connects Goxo’s visual language to surrealism and its capacity to respond to crisis, uncertainty and disorientation.

Moloi writes:

“The philosophies embodied in his work – transformation, dreaming, symbolism and becoming – are directly responsive to the theme of the festival, which seeks to unspool, detangle and undo violent histories of extraction that are responsible for much of the dispossession experienced today. Within the context of a world on fire, where rationality in the economic and political systems that govern us can and should be questioned, Goxo's subtle paintings seem a fitting response.”

Goxo’s paintings frequently begin as small sketches drawn from personal experiences, encounters and emotions. These ideas are not transferred directly onto the canvas. Instead, they are altered, covered, removed and reintroduced as the work develops.

“He develops these into larger ideas, though rarely in a straight line – removing and adding layers along the way. An object might appear on the canvas that appeared in an initial sketch or disappear through an added layer of paint. He describes the process as a conversation between himself and the work, one that continues until something settles. As long as a painting remains in the studio, it remains a possibility for exploration and potential reworking,” observes Moloi. 

The objects that appear in his paintings are not necessarily intended to be read literally.

Goxo explains: “I try to capture emotions rather than just objects... I might draw a female figure in the painting, but the figure probably represents me and my own mental state, whatever emotions I feel.”

His calm surfaces, pale colours and precise arrangements contain an underlying restlessness. They suggest that reality can be disassembled and rearranged, and that another language may be needed to understand the present.

As Moloi concludes, Goxo’s practice offers: “another language to express and explain what’s going on.”

Voni Baloyi writes:

“Circling back to the action of CTRL+Z, it also reminds us of the technological parts we don’t see and, similarly, how in mining culture and cobalt mining in the DRC there is violence that is left in the dark as the world benefits from the gadgets that are born from death.”

The motherboard is a central visual and conceptual element in Kabeya’s work. Its pathways and circuits become metaphors for land, belonging and migration.

“The motherboard is a key aspect of Kabeya’s work. It is a peculiar object when you consider its function and its name. It provides the space, pathways, and connections for everything to function. Perhaps similarly to land and what others would call their motherland, it allows for connection, space, and pathways for you to traverse and function in your state. The DRC is Kabeya's motherland, as is South Africa,” explains Baloyi. 

Kabeya’s own experience of moving between these two countries has made him acutely aware of the instability and vulnerability associated with migration.

“You don’t know how to locate yourself. There is social upheaval. There is never a calm environment; even in the places where there is not much politics happening, there is always some political struggle,” he says. 

His work forms part of Stay/Return: Tactics of Repair at Untitled Art. Cobalt and lithium determine much of his palette, while hessian introduces another material connected to histories of exploitative trade and labour.

“Kabeya also reminds us that when moments of war and political upheaval occur, organisations like the UN, which come to repair and undo, only observe those affected as statistics. That’s why Kabeya never defines a face or boldly colours his figures; it is to remind us of this dark truth,” writes Baloyi. 

The work asks audiences to consider the distance between the apparent ease of digital life and the labour, displacement and death embedded within the materials that sustain it.

Baloyi closes with a series of questions that sit at the centre of the festival theme: “How do we undo centuries of earthly and human extraction? How do we repair fractures caused by migration? And how do we clear the pathways for the motherboard to stay functioning?”

Nkgopoleng Moloi writes:

"Sequins/Sequence’ explores the disruptive force of dance and its ability to alter perceptions of movement. If movement is thought of as the body’s relationship to time and space, ‘Sequins/Sequence’ depicts both relationships, highlighting the social and cultural life of Latin and ballroom dance in the Western Cape.”

The work deals not only with immediate physical movement, but also with the longer histories of race, gender and class that have shaped access to social and cultural spaces. The title refers both to the sequins worn by dancers and to the sequences of movement they perform. It also introduces a question about history and futurity.

“Thinking of sequence as the rhythmic patterns followed by dancers – 1, 2…1, 2… – but perhaps also sequence in relation to fate – that is to say, ‘what comes next?' or ‘what is to come next?' If what has come before is exclusion and erasure, what pathways might the future reveal?” writes Moloi. 

The sequins and elaborate costumes worn by the dancers become expressions of glamour, visibility and self-determination.

“Walters’ glamorous images of dancers from different communities who can claim glamour as resistance against social and political limitations are important. This is significant as a form of self-fashioning through dance. The images that document these states reflect new ways of imagining and writing new kinds of histories,” Moloi observes. 

The work also looks beyond the spectacle of competition to the sustained labour, discipline and devotion that make performance possible.

“Not all performances unfold beneath the spotlight. Some emerge in the pauses between movement, in rehearsed practice, quiet rituals, and the sustained commitment that makes performance possible,” states Walters. 

Dance is presented as a means of creating and sustaining community across generations. Knowledge is passed between bodies, partners and families through repeated practice.

“In the simplest sense, 'sequins/sequence' points to the very intimate relationship that develops between partners who work and compete together. But on a much deeper level, it reveals dance’s ability to encode and sustain rich social structures through shared activity, shared values, belonging and community,” concludes Moloi.

The artist incorporates tar, bricks, fabric and other remnants found in the neighbourhood. One work made with bricks and pink fabric becomes a puzzle that visitors can handle and rearrange inside the gallery.

“Similar to the use of colour, serious play is still at the centre of his more structural works, where he works with remnants,” Baloyi writes. 

Straatmate is ultimately structured through return: to District Six, to memories of family, to the body and to performance.

“On a personal level he returns to memories of his grandmother. District Six presents a return to the community that gave him much comfort in the first struggles of moving to Cape Town. And it is in these streets that he finds a return to his bodily fate as a performer who does not have to live up to the expectations of a conventional artist's studio practice,” writes Baloyi. 

• The Heat Winter Arts Festival runs from August 6 to 15. Visit www.heatfestival.org for more information about the exhibitions and art events. Full-length texts on these artists can be found in the HEAT publication which will be launched at the festival and will be available for free online.