RMB Latitudes CuratorLab

South Africa is preparing to take the global stage once again. Art Periodic South Africa (A°P), in partnership with the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture (DSAC) and with Latitudes Online as Strategic and Media Partner, is proud to unveil the governance framework for the South African Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2026).

Emma van der Merwe, Director of Everard Read Gallery Cape Town, joins Refiloe Mpakanyane to talk about the quiet contracts that hold the art world together — trust, instinct, and love for the work itself. In this conversation, she lifts the curtain on the energy and potential driving South Africa’s art scene, reflecting on the delicate balance between representing artists and believing in their long game — with buoyancy at the heart of it all.

Faith is nurtured and strengthened by shared practice, repeated gestures and communal bonds. The artworks shown here invite viewers to consider how belief shapes identity and how a sense of oneness grows when individuals search for meaning together. This exhibition aims to encourage us to focus on our shared human need for connection and fullness rather than the differences that exist across beliefs.

This exhibition explores fragments of home, the spaces and conditions that shape us, through the intertwined themes of memory, freedom, and identity. Home here is not confined to walls; it is emotional, mental, and spiritual. It is a place that shapes and mirrors who we are, even when fractured by inequality and displacement.

Conflict and war shape our experiences and definitions socially, and art is no different. Most artists from conflict-affected regions find their work defined by these circumstances, whether they embrace or resist this lens. Since April 2023, many Sudanese art exhibitions have been framed politically or nostalgically, but as a curator, I ask: who is thinking of the art itself? How does the environment affect visual memory and artistic production?

“Take a walk with me” An invitation to accompany another through the paths they navigate. This exhibition extends that call, walking alongside narratives shaped by South Africa’s enduring traumas and the identities forged within them. It retraces the long walk once framed as a journey to freedom. A walk that promised unity and equality but left uneven footprints on a divided land.

What happens in the space between certainty and the unknown? Between who we were and who we are becoming? In the Between: States of Becoming is a contemporary art exhibition exploring the psychological and emotional terrain of transition moments suspended between stability and chaos, clarity and confusion. The exhibition presents a raw and resonant look at the human condition through the lens of mental health, focusing on the invisible yet transformative process of change.

In her novel En compagnie des hommes, Ivorian writer Véronique Tadjo gives voice to the Baoba tree. The tree, symbol of great wisdom, speaks and awakens the memory of humanity, as a deadly and incurable virus looms and threatens the human race with extinction. In this way, Véronique Tadjo revives the African narrative tradition of giving voice to plants, animals, and other inanimate natural elements, which thus become privileged observers of the humans with whom they coexist.

This curatorial exhibition aims to bring together African artists whose practices move through ancestral memory, spiritual lineage and the living archive.

What We Don’t See: A Sensory Rebellion explores how art moves beyond the visible, revealing a world perceived through sound, texture, rhythm, and silence. The exhibition questions the dominance of sight in the way we experience and interpret art, reimagining perception as a multisensory field where emotion, material, and memory shape the act of seeing.

In Ethiopia, vulnerability is often met with silence or spiritual platitude. Feelings, especially those that are heavy, shapeless, or unresolved rarely find form, let alone space. The Weight of Soft Things brings together five emerging Ethiopian women artists who confront this absence by placing emotional life at the center of their work.

Fabrics Tell Stories Too is born from a refusal to remain within the frame. It asks: what happens when art is no longer only what hangs on the wall, but also what is worn, carried, cleansed, bled, or mourned? What happens when materials themselves become testimonies of memory, resilience, and survival?

‘embo: where we once knew‘ is a pathway to ancestral memory: isikhumbuzo sethu sothando (somhlaba). This exhibition is a love letter to the land; it is the cry and the consolation; it is a reminder that this land continues to birth us.

For the last few months, the interdisciplinary arts space, The Centre for the Less Good Idea, has been revisiting work it’s created over the last two years, and building towards its 11th Season. Taking place at The Centre from 26 to 30 November, Season 11 takes the form of a five-day festival of visual art, dance, theatre, site-specific installations, pop-up performances, and talks.

The analogue art world faces mounting challenges – from rising rental costs for gallery and studio spaces to depreciating local currencies, which make participation in international art fairs increasingly expensive for South African art dealers.