Rumours /2026 is an exhibition co-curated by Lunetta Bartz on behalf of the Santu Mofokeng Foundation. Bringing together three bodies of work drawn from Mofokeng’s extended engagement with Bloemhof and its surrounding communities between 1988 and 1994, art-lovers and appreciators of photography get to experience these images and their inspirations firsthand from 24 April to 18 October 2026 at The Standard Bank Art Lab.
Rumours /2026 unravels memory through photographic fragments
First shown in 1994 as Rumours / The Bloemhof Portfolio, Rumours /2026 returns reactivated and repositioned for a present that will find its depictions still relevant.
The title gestures toward the ways in which knowledge moves: laterally, informally and often without resolution. What emerges is not a singular narrative, but a field of relations shaped by memory, labour, intimacy and belief.
At the centre of the exhibition is The Black Photo Album / Look at Me: 1890–1950, a body of work composed of studio portraits collected by Mofokeng over many years. Commissioned by Black working and middle-class families, these images exist outside of official archives, made for interiors and private circulation.
In gathering, retouching and re-presenting these images, Mofokeng asks what it means to encounter images that were never intended for public view, and what it means to look within an archive that resists containment.
Interrogations of labour, intimacy and the spirit of the collective
On display alongside The Black Photo Album / Look at Me: 1890–1950 is a collection titled Concert at Sewefontein, which traces a moment of collective release. Photographed during a gathering of farmworkers and tenant labourers, the images move through low light and motion, with bodies folding into one another and beyond time and place.
Finally, the Labour Tenancies collection display anchors the exhibition in the textures of everyday life. Produced during Mofokeng’s research with tenant farming communities, these photographs hold the contradictions of place: intimacy and distance, familiarity and estrangement, as they insist on the complexity of lives shaped within, but not confined to, the structures of apartheid.
Across these works, Mofokeng’s practice unsettles the expectations of documentary photography. Rather than producing images of spectacle or crisis, he turns toward what is often overlooked: the spiritual, the domestic and the quietly constructed self.
How to visit
Cost: Free entry
When: Running from 24 April to 18 October 2026 during Art Lab hours, which are: Monday to Saturday from 9am to 4pm; Sunday and public holidays from 9am to 1pm
Where: Standard Bank Art Lab, West Tower, Shop 33-34 Nelson Mandela Square, 2 Maude St, Sandton
Website: santumofokengfoundation.com | sponsorships.standardbank.com
Email: [email protected]
Tel: 011 447 6680 (Santu Mofokeng Foundation) | 011 636 1061 (Standard Bank Arts)
Facebook: @StandardBankArts
Instagram: @santumofokengfoundation | @standardbankarts
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