Zeitz MOCAA at FNB Art Joburg 2026: See the Full Programme of Events

Cape Town-based Pan-African institution, Zeitz MOCAA, is making its mark at the 2026 edition of FNB Art Joburg, Africa’s longest-running contemporary art fair. From 3 to 6 September 2026, art appreciators can engage with a curated programme of talks, networking opportunities and a highlight presentation of A Black Consciousness of Space and Time by Nolan Oswald Dennis.

What Zeitz MOCAA is up to at FNB Art Joburg:

Installation view of Xenolith (Letsema), 2024, a collaborative site-specific intervention featured in UNDERSTUDIES (2024–2025), a solo exhibition by Nolan Oswald Dennis. Photo by Dillon Marsh, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA | What's on in Joburg — Installation view of Xenolith (Letsema), 2024, a collaborative site-specific intervention featured in UNDERSTUDIES (2024–2025), a solo exhibition by Nolan Oswald Dennis. Photo by Dillon Marsh, courtesy of Zeitz MOCAA

NIROX x Zeitz MOCAA Panel Discussion – I AM, WE ARE: Ubuntu as a living heritage

This talk focuses on the place of Ubuntu in law, art, and politics today – recognised as a central pillar in upholding constitutional values since the advent of democracy in South Africa.

Drawing parallels to Justice Albie Sachs’s “Preparing Ourselves for Freedom” (1989), in which he argued that, through “repeated incantation,” art as a weapon of the struggle had lost some of its elan and energy, this discussion asks whether Ubuntu’s overuse/oversimplification over the past twenty years has created a similarly “shallow and forced relationship” between the term and its values.

At the heart of the conversation is a desire to reinvigorate Ubuntu within the public imagination, drawing on its use by Justice Sachs and Justice Yvonne Mokgoro in the application of South Africa’s Constitution.

This gathering is conceived as a bridge between Spring is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs at Zeitz MOCAA (curated by Dr. Phokeng Setai) and the forthcoming I AM, WE ARE: Ubuntu as a living heritage (curated by Ithateng Mokgoro and Sven Christian). It will take place at NIROX’s Lawn Pavilion and the surrounding arbor.

Panelists include Justice Albie Sachs, Dr. Phokeng Setai (Zeitz MOCAA), Khanyisile Mawhayi (Zeitz MOCAA), Ithateng Mokgoro (Yvonne Mokgoro Foundation) and the panel is moderated by Sven Christian (NIROX Foundation).

Cost: Entry is free. RSVP at [email protected] to secure your spot. Limited to 40 pax

When: Wednesday, 2 September 2026 from 11am to 12pm
Where: NIROX Sculpture Park (Lawn Pavilion), R540 Kromdraai Rd, Kromdraai, Krugersdorp

A Black Consciousness of Spacetime by Nolan Oswald Dennis at FNB Art Joburg

For its FNB Art Joburg 2026 presentation, Zeitz MOCAA revisits UNDERSTUDIES (2024–2025), the first major South African museum solo exhibition by Johannesburg-based artist Nolan Oswald Dennis.

UNDERSTUDIES positioned the exhibition as a site of experimentation, where diagrams, drawings, models and collaborative gestures became ways of interrogating geo-cosmic epistemologies and political readings of time. Following this proposition, A Black Consciousness of Spacetime considers Dennis’s practice as a rethinking of space as a relational and transforming field shaped by geological, ecological, metaphysical, political, social and pedagogical frameworks.

The booth foregrounds Xenolith (Letsema) (2024) and Soft Rock (leNqaba yoMkhosi) (2024), two works that extend this thinking through materiality and collaboration. Xenolith (Letsema) borrows its subtitle from a Setswana word for ‘voluntarily working together’, a word with a political history connected to collective labour in the South African liberation struggle.

Its making began with an invitation to specific museum staff members to think within and alongside Dennis’s practice, relinquishing singular authorship and institutional hierarchies through which knowledge and objects are produced. The seven tightly packed and layered maquettes of pigmented soil are presented alongside the recipe books and a poem by Talia Mzamane from the museum’s Collections department.

Similarly, Soft Rock (leNqaba yoMkhosi), developed in collaboration with artist and writer Vusumzi Nkomo, brings geological matter into relation with the social and material processes it encounters. Together, the works resist stable definitions of land and matter, proposing a position in which relations, transformations and forms of knowledge remain in motion.

A Black Consciousness of Space and Time also presents the launch of ECLIPTICS, the first monograph on the work of Nolan Oswald Dennis, published by Zeitz MOCAA in collaboration with Swiss Institute New York and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König.

Cost: Tickets to FNB Art Joburg are R200pp per day; R400pp for a weekend pass. Book via tixsa

When: Thursday to Sunday, 3 to 6 September 2026. Thursday: VIP Preview Night from 6pm to 9pm | Friday: VIP Hour – 11am to 12pm; Public hours – 12am to 8pm | Saturday: VIP Hour – 11am to 12pm; Public hours 12am-7pm | Sunday: VIP Hour – 11am to 12pm; Public hours 12am-5pm
Where: Sandton Convention Centre, 161 Maude St, Sandown, Sandton

Zeitz MOCAA | What's on in Joburg — Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town

In conversation – A Memorial of Earth, Memory and Return: On Collective Work in Museum Practice

If the exhibition is seen as a site for experimentation, how can it be used to subvert and dismantle the hierarchical structures that frame museum practice? Through a conversation with Talia Mzamane (Collections Administrator, Zeitz MOCAA), Jason Adams (Production Assistant, Zeitz MOCAA) and Motlhoki from Nolan’s studio, unpack the making of Xenolith (Letsema) (2024) as an account of Walter D Mignolo’s idea of “epistemic disobedience”.

The conversation, moderated by Khanyi Mawhayi, will excavate how collective work and decentering the “artist” as isolated creator allowed for a multivocal approach to knowledge-making within the museum context.

Cost: Tickets to FNB Art Joburg are R200pp per day; R400pp for a weekend pass. Book via tixsa

When: Saturday, 5 September from 1.15pm to 2pm
Where: Sandton Convention Centre at Exhibition – 1, 161 Maude St, Sandown, Sandton

ZEITZ MOCAA Cocktail event

Join Zeitz MOCAA for an evening of meaningful connections and conversation, bringing together members of Johannesburg’s creative, cultural and business communities. The evening will also offer a moment for the Museum to share exciting updates on its upcoming programming, exhibitions and future plans, while creating space to connect, exchange ideas and celebrate the work ahead.

The cocktail evening is made possible by Bloomberg Connects, an app which aims to give art lovers access to expert-curated content and guides to over 1500 museums, galleries, sculpture parks, gardens and cultural spaces from the palm of your hand.