Oneness
presented by Palesa Ngwenya
Oneness
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Belief is firmly rooted in Black South African cultures, not only as theory, but as a way of belonging and being. 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.
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Banner Artwork Details:
Mandisa Buthelezi, AmaNazaretha 2, 2018, Archival Ink Print on Cotton Rag, Image size: 790 x 544 mm, Sheet size: 840 x 594 mm, R12 500 ex VAT, CONTACT TO BUY.
Tshepiso Moropa, “If You Forget Me”, 2024, Digital Collage Archival Matte Paper, 59.4 cm x 42 cm, Edition 2 of 10, R13 000 ex VAT.
EXHIBITION CURATOR, PALESA NGWENYA
Palesa Ngwenya is a Johannesburg-based emerging curator and visual storyteller whose work centres on Black South African stories, both personal and collective. With a deep interest in culture, spirituality, identity, memory, womanhood, and tradition, her practice is driven by the desire to make people feel seen. She is particularly fascinated by the duality of life and human beings, how joy and grief, tradition and modernity, strength and vulnerability often coexist. She believes storytelling is a powerful way to hold this complexity and to spark healing, dialogue, and recognition.
Palesa curates with the intention of creating spaces that feel familiar, reflective, and emotionally resonant. She is drawn to quiet conversations and the intimate details of everyday life. Though still new to curating, she brings a strong sense of observation and concept development to her process, with a personal love for conceptual thinking. Her background in design and storytelling, along with her experience working at Latitudes, continues to inform and shape her curatorial perspective, deepening her understanding of artists, audiences, and the evolving art ecosystem. Her practice is rooted in care, attentiveness, and imagination as she grows into her own artistic and curatorial voice.
This exhibition begins with an observation: the persistence of spirituality. Within Black South African cultures, belief is not placed at the margins of life. It informs how people belong, how identity is affirmed, and how meaning in self is sustained. The conversation shouldn't be so much about whether one believes, or even whether their belief is more accurate. Rather, it should be about the common experience of living by faith and the relationship between identity, spirituality and the pursuit of meaning. At the core of this exhibition is the subject of the complexity of belief and how it forms identity. Belief provides a framework, but the sense of community it fosters is what keeps it nourished. It requires maintenance. It is carried out through repeated actions, attention to detail in daily life, and relationships with objects, spaces, and others. Shared belief becomes shared feeling.
The act of practising belief is, in itself, a journey of self-discovery. To explore one’s faith is to travel inward, to confront, question, and rediscover the self. Even when that exploration aligns with a specific faith or religion, it remains a deeply personal voyage toward understanding and becoming. This inward travel mirrors the outward expressions of faith, revealing that belief is not only about connecting with something beyond, but also about finding one’s place within. It thus becomes more about the feeling of belonging, the sense of oneness that arises from being with others who share in the intangible experience of seeking something beyond themselves. This is why beliefs, even when they appear to clash, remain so powerful: they are carried not only in words or rituals, but also in the lived feeling of connection and the identity they affirm.
The works in this exhibition hold space for this reflection. They focus on highlighting the practices and unseen bonds that exist that bind us together, rather than presenting religion as a closed system. This exhibition aims to encourage conversation and deepen reflection by inviting viewers to look within as well as outward, to see spirituality as a common human experience of seeking, belonging, and becoming whole, rather than just a sign of cultural continuity.
Oneness is not abstract in this sense. It is a lived practice, carried out in daily rituals, communal gatherings, and personal reflections. It is an experience of wholeness that is deeply personal, yet undeniably communal. This exhibition seeks to hold space for conversation and reflection on that experience. It asks us to think less about the lines that divide one belief from another, and more about the grounds they share, the longing for oneness rooted in us, the strength of community, and the value such experiences bring to the self.
Puleng Mongale, Ho amohela dineo, 2024, Digital collage, 29.7 x 42.0 cm, R10 000 ex VAT.
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