Bag Factory Artists Studio | Ngiyiboneleni?

Bag Factory is pleased to present Ngiyiboneleni? a solo exhibition by Smiso Cele, the 2025 Cassirer Welz Award winner. He brings together two bodies of work from his ongoing project contemplating the “domestic as an archive of personal experiences… and as a mobilised space of public discourse.” The act of repeatedly returning to familiar objects unearths layered meanings that evoke different sensory responses.

In scale and quantity, Cele elevates the humble clip which seals off a packet of store bought bread. While it is an item so ubiquitous so as to almost be invisible, for Cele it is infused with significance arising from memories of chewing, breaking, and flicking it as a mindless pastime in his youth. Reflecting on his practice of revisiting and recreating objects loaded with nostalgia, he asks Ngiyiboneleni? This question arises from an expression that Cele’s mother used to call attention to an uncontrollable desire to overconsume something that is not usually around - often something edible.

The shovel sculptures are a continuation of the work presented in Ebuqwini, his 2024 exhibition, where he grappled with ideas of migrant labour through objects of familiarity from his childhood. The title referred to the nickname given to a de facto storeroom in their home.

Over the course of living in Johannesburg during his tertiary studies, the most ordinary of objects have evoked memories of home. And have, in their own way, brought comfort and familiarity to his new location. In the repetitive acts of welding, cutting, and sanding these newly created exaggerated forms of familiar objects, Cele retroactively imbues them with meaning and memory.

In Ngiyiboneleni? Cele continues building an intimate relationship between objects, memory, the environment, and the self.

This show runs from 13 November 2025 - 31 January 2026.