INDEX: Independent Artist Exhibition at RMB Latitudes Art Fair 2025

Curated by Bonolo Kavula

RMB Latitudes Art Fair's Independent Artist Exhibition, AKA: INDEX is a platform to give exposure to independent artists, who often have to create their own networks and methods for getting their work seen by audiences. This is often cultivated through fostering relationships with curators, organisers, and other artists, as well as building an online presence through websites, social media, and various platforms. This exhibition is a reflection of this spirit; it speaks to the importance of cultivating connections outside traditional models of exhibition making and creating space for galleries and audiences to discover new artists.

This year's exhibition is curated by Bonolo Kavula.

In its third year as a platform, INDEX continues to push towards subversion. Defying the common rules that require artists to be presented by a gallery at a fair, INDEX strives towards the breaking of those barriers to entry which exclude independent artists from art fair participation. This platform manifests itself as a group exhibition, titled Invisible Thread, curated by artist Bonolo Kavula.

An exciting group of independent artists from South Africa

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Thato Makatu, kitchen reflections. R8,000.00 ex. VAT, CONTACT TO BUY

At the core of Bonolo Kavula’s art practice is the interest in abstract printmaking with nontraditional approaches to form and material. Kavula, while seeking avenues to provide mentorship, has taken the opportunity through RMB Latitudes Art Fair to present: Invisible Thread. Together with a cohort of selected artists, Kavula explores conceptual and material analogies for identity and process while bringing threaded works in commune as they weave through the varying perspectives of culture, home and identity, as well.

Invisible Thread is an investigation into process-based material explorations as a form of interconnected dialogue between the participants. A testimony to the subterranean symphony of their complementing creative expressions, the presentation creates an axis and point of departure by proximity. Identity politics are such themes articulated with subverted symbols encoded with materialist approaches to meaning, their representative matter and aesthetic output. Audiences are rewarded for their attention and curiosity, as the artists are rewarded for their experimentation and vulnerability as they refine the signifiers of their creative vision.

Invisible Thread welcomes alternate approaches from both artist and audience that coalesce to confirm inherent synchronicities. The group exhibition includes the works of Yonela Doda, Thato Makatu, Tshepo Phokojoe, Khanyi Mawhayi, Dineo Ponde, Unathi Mkonto, Tinyiko Makwakwa and Bonolo Kavula.

Khanyi Mawhayi, Popping Cherries, 2023, R15,000.00 ex VAT, CONTACT TO BUY

Showing as a Special Project at RMB Latitudes Art Fair 2025, Invisible Thread is honoured to have its efforts platformed as Kavula Art Studio works to celebrate artists at every stage of their career, most vitally its initial stages of discovery and play.

Invisible Thread extrapolates on the core principles of Kavula’s studio, Kavula Art Studio, whereby the connective tissues of creativity are held and melded by the artist’s proposition of ‘scaffolding’. The Studio’s implementation of scaffolding is an answer to the arts ecology’s need for more active mentorship, support and celebration. The notion of scaffolding emboldens each artist’s practice as well as the presentation’s overarching themes. Phokojoe cites “challenging gravity” as an underscore of the idea of scaffolding within his approach to materials. Mafora illustrates the need for ‘scaffolding’, describing the creative process as Kavula selected each participating artist based on the observations she’s made as a member of their audience, online. Collating them with a discernment driven by her own experiences with their chosen materials, or technical development, Kavula offers a formless but informed playground upon which these ideas can continue their journey of taking shape.

Meet the 2025 RMB Latitudes INDEX Artists

Yonela Doda
Thato Makatu
Tshepo Phokojoe

Yonela Doda is a Cape Town-based mixed media and collage artist. Doda’s work is premised on Josef Breuer’s Catharsis Theory. Doda shows this by experimenting with collage and thread work(s) to communicate.

Thato Makatu is a South African artist/cultural producer in training and printmaker from Boksburg who is pursuing their Honours in Curatorship at Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT.

Tshepo Phokojoe is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in Visual Arts and Fashion. Phokojoe's artistic journey includes participation in the 2017 Peer Mentoring program at Assemblage Studios under the guidance of Bronwyn Lace. The artist presents sculptures made of Hessian and thread.

Khanyi Mawhayi is an artist and curator based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is developing a formal language across media, tackling themes such as decoloniality and world-building. Included in the presentation are the artist’s works made of oil sticks and thread on canvas.

Dineo Ponde describes their work as “[a] process [that] starts off with obsessive writing; stringing words together and [then the] visuals start to come out. Drawings are narratives: it's an archival photo, a poem, an idea, a response to something, pulled from different sources.” Their work is a compound of black ink and thread on polyester fabric exploring themes of belonging, home and memory.

Dineo Mafora, Till my insides turn and I am left unafraid, 2024, R5 000.00 ex VAT, CONTACT TO BUY

Unathi Mkonto artistic practice sits at the juncture between art and architecture. The work suggests the future of modernism and everything returning to the ground. An exploration of still life as architecture and the language of space. Using line, volume and scale, Mkonto’s works are assembled using timber and geometry.

Tshepo Phokojoe, Inside Out, 2023, R15, 500.00 ex VAT, CONTACT TO BUY

Tinyiko Makwakwa's, currently based in Johannesburg, practice centres African indigenous science and realities, that show a deep care for the interwoven narratives between materials, the landscape and Makwakwa’s process driven art practice. Her textiles are layered with vibrant colour derived from natural dyes both botanical dyes and orchers, glass beads and stitch embroidery, on natural fabric (linen, hemp, cotton and silk.)

Tinyiko Makwakwa, Reading the musical score in silence, 2024, R56 000.00 ex VAT, CONTACT TO BUY

Bonolo Kavula explores the language of printmaking beyond its traditional confines through her use of thread and punched Shweshwe fabric as an exercise of abstraction. Combining print, design, painting and sculpture, she creates works which are both dynamic and restrained in composition, using the repetition of tiny fabric cut-outs, tenuously connected by individual threads, she recreates the canvas with new, more intricate planes.

Bonolo Kavula, Horizon, 2024, R95 000.00 ex VAT, CONTACT TO BUY

- Text written by Misha Krynauw

Further Reading In Articles

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