state
of the art
Latitudes and rain come together to showcase up and coming artists and the latest 5G smart range, in a celebration of South African Art.
The 2025 RMB Latitudes Art Fair took place at the stunning Shepstone Gardens in Johannesburg from 23–25 May 2025.
As the official 5G connectivity partner, rain was proud to keep everyone connected, beautifully, with the the101 pro™ 5G smart router. Guests were able to scan and connect instantly to rain’s unlimited 5G wifi on their phones—capturing every moment and the incredible art on display.
As a brand committed to celebrating local creativity and talent, rain unveiled the new 101 art skins collection, featuring work by artists Amy Ayanda Lester, Davina de Beer, Balekane Legoabe, Nessi Penman, Nkhensani Mkhari, and Peter Eastman. rain also showcased another exciting collaboration at the fair—their ‘state of the art’ piece created by local artist Black Koki, featuring his bold, original work designed exclusively for the the101™ 5G smart range.
“At Latitudes, our mission is to make art accessible while championing opportunities for local artists, and we’re proud to continue this journey with rain,” said Roberta Coci, co-founder of Latitudes. “As the official connectivity partner of the 2025 RMB Latitudes Art Fair, rain once again provided free wifi to over 9,000 visitors, ensuring seamless connection throughout the event. But they went beyond infrastructure: through an inspired collaboration with six local Latitudes artists, rain launched a new collection of router skins that bring art directly into people’s homes. It’s a powerful example of how local brands can use their platforms to celebrate South African creativity and foster a deeper love of art across the country.”
the101 skins art collection is available to new rainOne customers starting June 2025.
For more information, visit rain.co.za.
the artists
Amy Ayanda Lester
Return to Skin, 2019
Acrylic on fabriano
Amy Ayanda Lester is an artist and musician based in Cape Town, South Africa. Amy holds an Honours degree in Painting from The Michaelis School of Fine Art at The University of Cape Town. Throughout her career, Amy has exhibited her work independently and has been a notable participant in numerous group exhibitions. She finds inspiration in the local landscape, particularly in the flora, colours and people. Her art, ranging from paintings to prints, frequently features proteas, fynbos, and the iconic mountain silhouette, drawing from her family’s experience of connection to the land, and the grief of being forcibly removed from their flower farm due to Apartheid forced removals.
Her art engages themes of memory and loss that find contradiction with the striking natural beauty of the land, and this contradiction reverberates in her vibrant abstract pieces. Her style is loose, and wondering, largely guided by an ‘instance’ – specifically in relation to how she uses colour. The artist has reflected on how her use of colour is dedicated to a feeling; a moment wherein a colour inspires her in its immediate, abstract and playful essence. In March of 2024, Amy was invited to the David Krut Workshop (DKW) to collaborate with printmaker Roxy Kaczmarek. She has also worked on a series of vessels in collaboration with Natasha Human as well as nine original works on canvas for her new body of work ahead of her solo presentation at the Latitudes Art Fair (May 2024).
Balekane Legoabe
Things I Heard on the Radio, 2022
Acryllic pain, oil pastel, ink, glitter card, tulle and polyester film on archival paper
Balekane Legoabe is a multidisciplinary artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. With a background in graphic design and illustration, Legoabe holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Communication with a specialization in Illustration and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Film Arts with a specialization in Motion Design, both from the Open Window Institute.
Legoabe's artistic practice spans mixed media, digital collages, animations, and gestural ink drawings. Her work is marked by a deep exploration of the interdependent relationships between humanity and the natural world. By using organic objects like plants, animals, and human figures, she creates pieces that resonate on a visceral level, encouraging viewers to tap into the complexity and obscurity of their emotions. Her art often delves into themes of liminality, emotional states, and the parallel experiences that characterize human and natural interactions.
Her creative process involves working in both digital and traditional media, often resulting in intricate compositions that blend visual storytelling with abstract representations. Legoabe’s work is known for its dynamic use of color and form, creating a powerful narrative that speaks to both personal and collective experiences.
Legoabe has exhibited her work in numerous group exhibitions and art fairs across South Africa, including the Turbine Art Fair and the StateoftheART Gallery Award Finalists Exhibition, where she won the prize in 2019. Her work is also part of public collections at the William Humphreys Gallery in Kimberley, South Africa, and the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, Germany.
Davina de Beer
Linger l, 2024
Acrylics on canvas
Davina de Beer is a South African artist based in Seville, Spain. She obtained her master's degree in fine art in 2008, after which she moved to Oman, in the Middle East, where she taught Art & Design to students of all ages. During her time in Oman, De Beer continued to participate in exhibitions in South Africa, like the travelling group show Prophecy, at the Grahamstown Art Festival and at Two by Two Art Studio in Johannesburg in 2013, and the Minor Matters Group Exhibition in 2010 at the Centenary Art Gallery, Bloemfontein.
While living in Oman, De Beer took part in numerous group exhibitions in the capital, Muscat, at Bait al Baranda, Bait AL Zubair, and Matti Sirvio Art Gallery, and showed her work at international art fairs in Oman and Monaco. In 2022 she relocated to Spain from Oman, where she took part in the Lacuna Art Festivals in 2021 and 2022 in Lanzarote, Spain. De Beer has had two solo exhibitions in the Middle East; one in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates in 2011 at Gallery 76, and the other in Muscat at Gallery Sarah in 2020.
In 2022, De Beer co-founded the Non-Site Art Collective with fellow artist and friend, Adelheid Frackiewicz, and in 2023 they had their first public collaboration in a two woman show at the Turbine Art Fair in Johannesburg.
Nessi Penman
Voices, 2024
Oil on canvas
Vanessa Penman also known as Nessi Penman is a contemporary impressionist impasto painter creating works which invite the viewer into the natural world of flowers and lush landscapes. 'My desire when I paint is to create works which instil within the viewer a deeper sense of calm and appreciation for nature and the paradise we live in. My objective is to draw people into my artworks so that they can find the creative spirit within themselves. I believe that we are all artists - may not be in paint or clay or charcoal, but we have the power to create beauty in our own environments and share that with others. I cannot say for sure where my love for oil painting came from, but one of my earliest memories were when my mother would take me to the art store once a month on her payday and she would buy me 'paint-by-numbers' and I would fall in love with the smell of those little tubs of paint and the distinct smell of the linseed oil contained therein - every time. Growing up in South Africa, the African landscape and its rich colours embedded themselves within my spirit.
Irma Stern, Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet are the three artists whose work I resonate with the most. I love their use of texture, emotion and dominant brush strokes. It makes you feel like you are observing a painting - not a photograph. Your eyes dance across the canvas trying to understand what the artist did and what they were seeing and feeling. As a self-taught artist, I have been guided by my intuition, the medium and the artwork itself. It is my personal experience that I am only a conduit - the artwork creates itself through me. Exhibitions; Group exhibition – Young Blood, Cape Town, South Africa, 2024 Group exhibition - Flagstaff Gallery, Devonport Auckland, New Zealand 2022
Nkhensani Mkhari
Narcissus IV, 2024
Mixed media on handmade paper
Nkhensani Mkhari is a South African post-disciplinary curator and artist. Their broad praxis spans from the philosophy that ‘the medium chooses the message’. They describe their work as a queer meditation on transience, aesthetic sociology, and redemptive futurologies to explores what individuality is, what collectivity is, and what it means to share space.
Nkhensani continues to expand in their praxis, synthesizing mediums to evoke new passages of materiality rooted in counteractive ways of seeing and modes of hearing.
Their works span various media, including painting, performance, sculpture, and mixed media, showcasing versatility and commitment to exploring the boundaries of artistic expression. Through their keen eye for detail and profound narrative depth, Mkhari invites viewers to engage with the complexities and nuances of contemporary life.
The series, aptly titled “Narcissus,” problematises traditional paradigms of self-reflexivity in artistic practice. Rather than perpetuating the narcissistic gaze traditionally associated with its mythological namesake, Mkhari’s work posits reflection as a mode of transcultural dialogue. This conceptual reframing is particularly salient within the context of contemporary African artistic production, where questions of authenticity and representation remain contentious.
Peter Eastman
Blue Yellow Light, 2024
Oil on aluminium
Peter Eastman is a British-South Africa contemporary painter renowned for his experimental approach to painting. Based in Cape Town, Eastman works across a variety of mediums and techniques, employing substrates like aluminium and materials such as chrome, enamel, resin, wax, graphite, and oil paint. His process involves reworking, scraping, and incising the surface of his pieces to create paintings that balance representation and abstraction. Known for his bold use of base colours, Eastman's work often appears mono- or duo-chromatic, featuring subtle lines and shapes articulated by thin ridges of paint or resin, adding dimension and complexity. Eastman's work is profoundly influenced by his surroundings—his lived interiors, cityscapes, family photographs, and landscapes familiar to him.
His unique process disassembles and re-configures these images, producing new compositions that evoke a dreamlike familiarity, subtly blending memory and mood. As an artist rooted in the physicality of painting, Eastman’s work retains an authentic painterly quality, transcending the digital distortions and re-configurations prevalent in the age of technology.
Eastman has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, with his work shown at prominent galleries such as Barnard Gallery, SMAC Gallery, and Everard Read. He has also been recognized in various art fairs, including the Cape Town Art Fair and the FNB Joburg Art Fair. His paintings have attracted international attention, with his pieces being offered at auction and achieving notable prices, including a record sale of "Riverbank I" at Aspire Art Auctions in 2019.
Through series such as Deep Chine, which explores a remote South African forest landscape, Eastman continues to evolve his practice, drawing on the natural world and his personal history to inform his ever-changing body of work.
About rain
rain started building their network in 2016. rain believes that when South African ingenuity is combined with access to fast, unlimited internet, anything is possible. In October 2019, rain launched the first 5G network in South Africa, offering unlimited 5G wifi to homes across the country. Then in 2023, rain launched rainone™ wifi & mobile all-in-one.
They also designed and launched the101™ smart range, available only on rainone™. The range includes the101™ and the101 pro™ 5G smart router and the101 xtender™. Now you can connect beautifully with the101 5G smart range and the new 101 skins™ collection inspired by South African artists, in proud partnership with Latitudes Online.
Shop now on rain.co.za
Further Reading In Articles
African Artist Directory