Solo Exhibition | STEVENSON, Cape Town | 4 July – 15 August 2026
Filmed during the opening of the exhibition, this short film moves through the gallery space and the works on view.
In conversation, Mawande Ka Zenzile spoke about painting as a form of meditation: a practice of waiting until the mind becomes quiet enough to be passed through, or momentarily left behind. His process depends on this state of heightened presence, where painting is not forced into being, but allowed to emerge from attention, stillness and the immediacy of the moment. The exhibition extends this meditative process into a body of work where line, colour and material become pathways through memory, ancestry, African and isiXhosa knowledge systems, and other ways of knowing.
I attended the opening of Penny Siopis’s solo exhibition Love in a Turning World at STEVENSON, Cape Town, on 7 February 2026. The gallery describes it as Siopis’s first exhibition with STEVENSON since her acclaimed retrospective For Dear Life at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) in 2024/25 (STEVENSON, 2026).
STEVENSON’s framing is sharp: love is advanced not as a sentimental pictorial subject but as a position — a disposition — a way of being in relation to others, to the non-human, and to a world experienced as unstable and in flux (STEVENSON, 2026). Although the exhibition carries recurring suggestions of embracing figures and birth, the emphasis is on love as an orientation rather than illustration. The title’s “turning” operates across multiple registers, signalling both the current global and psychological condition of upheaval and the internal logic of Siopis’s method — a practice of transformation in which form, meaning, and emotion remain open rather than fixed (STEVENSON, 2026).
Siopis is, quite simply, one of the most talented and challenging visual artists working in and beyond South Africa (Olivier, 2014). It was a genuine honour to encounter her at the opening and to experience her generosity at close range: she shares knowledge, technical detail, and philosophical reflection in her characteristic smiling, easy manner — never performative, always precise.
The exhibition is comprehensive, spanning paintings on canvas and paper, sculptures, and video works. The moment I stepped off the main road in Woodstock and into the gallery, I felt enclosed by another world — not an escape so much as a proposition: a vision of what could still be possible in a future world shaped by colour, trust, and joy. The vibrancy of the palette, the confidence of the forms, and the sheer scale of the works transported me into a different register of attention. I found myself reluctantly letting go of that state as I stepped back outside into ordinary reality.
STEVENSON is, of course, known for staging extraordinary exhibitions, but this one felt unusually direct in its impact — almost like a needed dose: this is what I need right now — joy. Thank you for offering the public this beautiful opportunity.
Below please find some animated/video impressions of the show and the opening event.
References
Olivier, G. (ed.) (2014) Penny Siopis: Time and Again. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
I’m writing this in my own register: direct, image-led, a little impatient with pretence, and worried about what gets lost when culture accelerates faster than people can metabolise it. I don’t want to simplify the issues we face, but I also don’t want to keep rewarding a tone of permanent emergency that leaves audiences numb, ashamed, or switched off.
The show features sculptures, installations, and drawings that explore the, fragility of democracy in Mozambique using, materials like glazed ceramic feet, rusted iron, and wood.
The idea for this article emerged from an evening of conversation and connection. On 31 October, I attended the opening of menino, não fala política, a solo exhibition by Luis M. S. Santos at Reservoir Gallery, Cape Town. I spoke with gallery co-founder Heinrich Groenewald about the gallery’s background and vision, and later with Santos himself about the conceptual and political context of his work. What began as a casual exchange quickly unfolded into a reflection on how artistic dialogue and professional networks shape not only our understanding of contemporary practice but also the research paths we follow.
