![Be[long]](https://vrystaatkunstefees.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Visuele_Kunste-Be-long.webp)
André Rose’s Be[long] is a photographic exhibition exploring place, belonging, and longing. Drawing on locations from the past five years, it examines how relationships to space are shaped and contested, raising questions of inclusion, exclusion, and visibility. The work engages critically with land, considering access, ownership, and stewardship within unequal contexts. Through everyday scenes and familiar objects, it challenges social norms and invites reflection on overlooked or “whitewashed” narratives. Featuring analogue and digital photographs on a range of materials, the exhibition offers a layered meditation on identity, memory, and spatial justice.
The exhibition is open Monday to Friday (7-10 July), 08:00 to 17:00, and on Saturday (11 July), 09:00 to 16:00.
Opening: 7 July, 18:00
Walkabout: 8 July, 11:00 – 11:45
UKWAMBULELWA is an ongoing photographic body of work that explores how spirit reveals itself through dreams, ritual, land, and inherited symbols. The project draws on the artist’s experience of dreams as a form of guidance, shaping personal and spiritual understanding. Grounded in African spiritual knowledge, it presents land as a living archive of memory, lineage, and presence. Reeds and water serve as key symbols, representing origin, emergence, cleansing, and connection. Created on analogue film, the work reflects a slow, ritual-like process. UKWAMBULELWA honours African cosmologies as living systems and explores how dreams, ancestral presence, and landscape continue to shape identity, belonging, and spiritual responsibility.
The exhibition is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00.
Dosomethin’, an interactive sound sculpture exhibition by Abraham Mennen, invites audiences to shift from observers to active participants, shaping an evolving sonic tapestry. It foregrounds the fleeting yet enduring nature of sound, where each moment contributes to an ongoing musical narrative. Participants are encouraged to act with awareness, recognising that every contribution exists alongside past, present, and future sounds. Emphasising respect, responsibility, and cohesion, the work frames music-making as a shared, time-based process. With no fixed beginning or end, the space is subtly guided and activated by professional musicians as they move through it.
Developed as part of the International Institute of the Arts’ Artist-in-Residence Programme.
The exhibition is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00
Since its launch in 2013, the Rust-en-Vrede Portrait Award has established itself as South Africa’s leading celebration of contemporary portraiture. Inspired by the British BP Portrait Award, it aims to promote local portrait practice and provide artists with a fair platform. This biennial competition attracts hundreds of entries from across the country, with the Top-40 works selected from an initial Top 100 for exhibition. The award raises public awareness, encourages experimentation across different media, and affirms portraiture as a dynamic, evolving practice that reflects both personal and collective identities.
The exhibition is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00.
In Tafelmaniere, plates are not just seen but also “heard”. With this exhibition, the plate dons a contemporary art jacket, liberating it from its typically polite, domestic role. Bold and outspoken, the works challenge the perception of ceramics as traditionally functional. Each plate becomes an artwork – tangible and charged – and invites viewers to reconsider the rituals, hierarchies, and unspoken rules that shape our tables and our lives.
The exhibition is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00.
Wat is ’n huis by Anthony Dalton revisits mid-20th century Afrikaans devotional wall hangings to explore identity, memory, and cultural symbolism. Inspired by decorative prints from 1960s and 70s South African homes, Dalton recreates their aesthetic through hand-painted glass, nostalgic colours, and period typography. Featuring works like Wat is ’n huis sonder ’n daddy, Wat is ’n huis sonder ’n puppy, and Wat is ’n huis sonder ’n twink, the exhibition subverts traditional family messaging by introducing contemporary queer imagery. This playful yet critical approach creates tension between nostalgia and queer expression, inviting reflection on home, belonging, and cultural symbols.
The exhibition is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00.
You are what you eat presents a playful yet reflective exploration of identity through transformed everyday objects. Using antique items such as teacups and spoons, the artist creates miniature oil paintings with trompe-l’œil effects that blur the boundaries between object and image. By placing contemporary and personal imagery onto historical artefacts, the work creates a dialogue between past and present. With a light, tongue-in-cheek tone, it explores belonging, memory, and transformation. Each piece becomes a metaphor, inviting viewers to reflect on how identity is continuously shaped, reimagined, and renegotiated over time.
The exhibition is open daily from 09:00 to 18:00
Passage – a song brings together Akinbode Akinbiyi and Abrie Fourie in a collaborative exploration shaped by shared walks and attentive listening in Ouagadougou and Oubritenga, in Burkina Faso. Combining photography and field recordings, the exhibition unfolds as a visual and sonic composition attuned to the city’s rhythms. Through close observation, the artists capture fleeting gestures and subtle atmospheres. Akinbiyi’s walking practice traces everyday urban life, while Fourie explores tensions between absence and presence. Together, they create a meditative work that invites audiences to slow down and experience the city as a living field of movement, memory, and sound.
The exhibition is open daily from 08:30 to 16:30.
