The Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF) presents the third and final exhibition in its acclaimed ‘Worldmaking’ trilogy, titled Reverse Futures.
Running from 26 June until 5 December 2026, the exhibition is the final puzzle piece in a three-year programme that has explored how human beings imagine, shape and inhabit the world, and what kind of world we want to leave behind.
Guanaquerx (2024) in the foreground, and Georgia Munnik, The
Strangling Fruit (2026) at left; with Cave_bureau’s installation Shimoni
Slave Cave (2022–2023) in the background. Photo Graham De Lacy.
A brief history on Worldmaking
The ‘Worldmaking’ trilogy began with Ecospheres in 2024, an exhibition project that reflected on the natural world and unpacked the belief that humans are designed to live as part of a harmonious interaction between all living creatures.
Then came Structures in 2025, which focused on the built environment and the connection between people and places. The exhibition interrogated issues of race, colonialism, migration and modernism through a series of otherworldly installations.
In 2026, the project concludes with Reverse Futures.
A much-anticipated conclusion to a three-part artistic venture
Reverse Futures looks to the future from the Global South. The exhibition examines how the effects of colonialism, migration and technological change continue to shape both the present and our vision of what lies ahead.
The title is derived from Nairobi-based architectural practice, Cave_bureau, who coined the term ‘reverse futurism’ to address the impact and effects of colonialism in Africa and specifically Kenya.
Reverse Futures suggests that a fair future requires acknowledging historical injustices while foregrounding plural, locally grounded knowledges shaped by community practices and more sustainable ways of living. Featured artworks draw from historical research, artists’ lived experiences, community narratives and Indigenous knowledge systems and reflect on migration, memory, ecology, the cosmos and power.
Featured artists and their project ideologies
Featured artists in Reverse Futures include Etel Adnan, Cave_bureau, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, Paula Gaetano Adi, Kamil Adam Hassim, Traci Kwaai, Ernest Mancoba, Georgia Munnik and Yinka Shonibare, with special projects by Rebecca Potterton and Wolff Architects.
Unlike how the future is often represented as utopian or dystopian in popular culture, for many in the Global South, the future is not distant but rooted in the present, where communities who have long grappled with inequality, environmental change, conflict and extraction, carry within them the vision and urgency to transform it. The exhibition’s curation foregrounds these perspectives in three interconnected sections: space, time and place.
The ‘space’ section includes artworks by Yinka Shonibare, Etel Adnan and Kamil Adam Hassim presenting the cosmos through Indigenous knowledge, displacement, and perception, framing it as a site of survival and imagination.
The ‘time’ section features artworks by Ernest Mancoba and Cave_bureau in dialogue, connecting cave histories and modernist painting to show how past and present intertwine through shared marks, gestures and the legacies of colonialism.
The ‘place’ section features installations by Traci Kwaai, Georgia Munnik and Paula Gaetano Adi exploring how technology and sensory experience can connect locations, memories and communities, creating new ways of archiving personal and collective stories.
Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Technology and Power since
1500 (2023) by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler, in the Reverse Futures
exhibition. Photo Graham De Lacy.
Immersive encounters in Reverse Futures
The exhibition unfolds its themes through a number of immersive encounters which include:
- a dive underwater to hear the stories of the Kalk Bay community;
- an African astronaut searching for a habitable world;
- traces of slavery in Kenyan caves;
- the contradictory smells of Johannesburg;
- a robot re-enacting a 19th-century liberation campaign in the Andes;
- and an expansive visualisation of the calculative logics of empire.
Such situated approaches challenge dominant narratives of progress, opening space for alternative ways of imagining the planet’s future without losing sight of ongoing injustices, including how they may be reproduced beyond Earth.
How to visit
Cost: Entry into JCAF is free, but by appointment only. Reserve your visit here
When: Reverse Futures is open for viewing from 26 June until 5 December 2026. Tuesday to Saturday, based on bookings. Closed on Sunday, Monday and public holidays
Where: The Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation (JCAF), No 1 Durris Road, Forest Town, Johannesburg
Website: jcaf.org.za
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 010 900 2204
Instagram: @foundation_jcaf
Check out more art and design experiences in Joburg
