Holding sp(l)ace for the in__between: Latest MTN x UJ New Contemporaries Awards exhibition reflecting on contemporaneity.
by Christa Dee
Makhanda’s National Arts Festival is one of the most significant moments in South Africa’s annual arts calendar. It took place between 26 June and 5 July this year. The multidisciplinary festival was the first home for the exhibition Holding sp(l)ace for the in__between. Curated by Amogelang Maledu, the 2025/2026 curator for the MTN x UJ New Contemporaries Award programme, the exhibition brought together the work of four South African contemporary artists: Zara Julius, thato makatu, Unathi Mkonto and Simnikiwe Buhlungu. Buhlungu was selected by an independent panel of adjudicators including Christine Dixie, Shalom Mushwana and Rucera Seethal as the 2026 recipient of the MTN x UJ New Contemporaries Award, announced at the exhibition’s opening.
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The exhibition occupied two neighbouring spaces, Gallery in the Round and New Gallery, within The Monument Building. The exercise of walking down multiple stairs and finding oneself deeper within the building, mirrored the internal vibrations that could be felt when standing within the enveloping sound installations by Buhlungu and Julius. The inclusion of two sound works reflects Maledu’s scholarly interest in sound and its potential to create an active and affective sensory experience for audiences.
On view in Gallery in the Round was Buhlungu’s It’s Us O Lord (2022/2026), a piece that draws on the artist’s broader preoccupation with how knowledge is produced. A previous iteration was presented at Kunsthalle Bern in 2022. Buhlungu is not a sound artist, but rather an artist who works across multiple mediums and engages with different forms of cognisance. Sound, therefore, becomes a point of encounter with knowledges. Through sound, and particularly in this work, Buhlungu thinks about reverberation. Reverberation in the sense that it enables us to think about the quality of the spaces we occupy, with sound influencing and influenced by our perception of space as it bounces off the walls.
Simnikiwe Buhlungu, It’s Us O Lord. Image courtesy of University of Johannesburg.
The narrative underbelly for It’s Us O Lord is the late South African modernist painter Gerard Sekoto’s rendition of the song It's Me, O Lord; an old song that travelled through the transatlantic slave trade. Buhlungu first encountered the song through hymn practice at school. Later, while doing research as an already practising artist, she came across an EP sold on auction, made by Sekoto during his time in Paris titled Negro Spirituals, which included the song. The multiple utterings of the hymn across time become instances of reverberation pointing to the circularity of the past, present and future. It’s Us O Lord builds on the artist’s exploration of sound playing a social function; existing as a witness, a record, a tonal device, an invitation for collectivity. The installation took over the entire space with muted orange lighting and modular platforms which the artist calls khuaya stands, gesturing at the call to gather.
Moving into the adjacent space, one was greeted by makatu’s series of mixed-media installations. These works were made up of screenprints and turmeric anthotypes. Lithographs and pencil drawings of homes and external domestic scenes adhered to cardboard, then layered to produce shallow, makeshift relief sculptures. The fragmentation of these works and the material choices reflect on makatu’s interest in concepts of home, shifts in the representation of domestic spaces, memory and what the artist describes as “the black residential landscape”. Upon closer inspection, these seemingly incomplete works revealed the time, physicality and tactility required to produce them, pointing to makatu’s embodied practice and interest in the possibilities of printmaking. Thematically, the work highlights concerns around safety through the visual presence of walls, while also exploring how safety measures can signal economic and social upward mobility, however fragile this may be. The work also considers the loss of access to space, evoked both by the recurring image of the wall and by fragmented memories of homes that are no longer accessible.
thato makatu's installations. Image courtesy of the University of Johannesburg.
thato makatu's installations. Image courtesy of the University of Johannesburg.
Julius’s multichannel installation Pneuma (for Mbizo & Mongezi) thinks about the relationship between life, death, breath and land dislocation. The work has as its narrative anchor reflections on two foundational South African jazz musicians: Johnny Mbizo Dyani and Mongezi Feza, who played and died in exile. The installation includes two benches that face each other, once again encouraging audience members to sit together as they encounter sound. The sound in this work being an ensemble of 6 voices using circular breathing: a breathing technique used by wind instrumentalists. Here, the nexus between living and dead is interrogated, asking what it means to breathe for others and how those who have already left us exist in the present.
Zara Julius, Pneuma (for Mbizo & Mongezi), image courtesy of the University of Johannesburg.
Mkonto’s Cultivating Soil (2026) explores social life and urban living through architecture. As a self-taught artist with a background in architecture, spatial thinking is central to this artistic approach. Repetitive shapes and structures become useful tools for creating a simplified yet recognisable representation of a cityscape. His installation is a conceptual investigation and proposes that the future of African architecture is agriculture. The beechwood sculptures prompt us to think ecospherically within the context of a dying environment. The layout encourages viewers to move through the space, making one conscious of one’s presence between the minimal wooden forms. The work is, therefore, a provocation to think about future urbanity by breaking away from the fast-paced, destructive Capitalocene within which we exist.
Unathi Mkonto, Cultivating Soil, 2026. Image courtesy of the University of Johannesburg.
Unathi Mkonto, Cultivating Soil, 2026. Image courtesy of the University of Johannesburg.
Unathi Mkonto, Cultivating Soil, 2026. Image courtesy of the University of Johannesburg.
All of the artists presented clearly spoke to the thematic framing for the show, which is to think about contemporaneity, both in terms of art and life. The exhibition also pointed to Maledu’s foundational position on artists as knowledge-makers developing their own visual grammar and aesthetic languages from which they interpret the world.
Holding sp(l)ace for the in__between’s debut in Makhanda was the latest node in an ever-evolving relationship between the MTN SA Foundation and the UJ Art Gallery. It is also a testament to MTN's nearly three-decades-long curiosity and interest in the arts. Originally established in 2001, the MTN New Contemporaries Award played a pivotal role in identifying and elevating emerging South African artists and curators until 2012. Artist award winners from that period included Usha Seejarim and Thembinkosi Goniwe (joint winners 2001), Mlungisi Zondi (2006) and collaborators Unathi Sigenu and Khanyisile Mbongwa (2012). Following a 10-year hiatus, the award was relaunched in 2022 as the MTN x UJ New Contemporaries Award with Khanya Mashabela as curator and Inga Somdyala as the winning artist.
Image courtesy of the University of Johannesburg.
The partnership between the MTN SA Foundation and the UJ Art Gallery dates back to 2008. MTN’s Group Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer, Nompilo Morafo, expands on this, stating that “the programme continues to support art education, curatorial development, skills transfer and youth empowerment, while providing greater visibility for emerging talent and advancing innovative approaches to arts and cultural development.” Since 2008, the organisations have presented six major public exhibitions, alongside artist and student development programmes. These showcases have been presented at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda and the Free State Arts Festival, where the re/connect/ing exhibition received a Vryskutter Award. The partnership has also driven innovation in the arts sector through the launch of UJ’s Moving Cube online gallery platform and the digitisation of Willem Boshoff’s Blind Alphabet: Letter B sculpture, earning a BASA Innovation Award.
The curator-centred approach to the programme is unusual in South Africa, with most awards going to artists and makers of work rather than those whose focus is exhibition-making. The significance of an award dedicated to exhibition-making with a newly appointed curator each edition is that it promotes the intellectual work required for the socio-spatial practice that is curatorial work. It also allows for the broadening and strengthening of the arts ecosystem, pointing to the significance of the relationship between artists and curators in the display and development of artistic practice. It is a recognition that curating is a practice that requires and deserves recognition and resources, particularly for those at the beginning of their careers. The curator, in turn, highlights who they see as their contemporary peers through their selection of artists who are commissioned to produce work for the exhibition.
As highlighted by UJ Art Gallery’s curator Dr Dineke Orton, “the programme’s most transformative contribution lies in its bestowal of a rare and invaluable resource: time. For the selected curator, this translates into the intellectual freedom to undertake deep research into South African artistic practices, to interrogate prevailing curatorial trends, and to refine a distinctive curatorial vision free from the constraints of short-term project cycles.”
