Connect the Dots. University of Cape Town, Cape Town. 2026 Honours in Curatorship Fellows. In collaboration with Centre for Curating the Archive and Iziko Museums. (14 May 2026)

You end at the change, I will begin there. Hiddingh Campus, Cape Town. 2025 Honours in Curatorship Fellows. In collaboration with Centre for Curating the Archive and Iziko Museums. (22 May 2025)

Collective vs. Individual. South Africa National Gallery, Cape Town. 2024 Honours in Curatorship Fellows. In collaboration with Centre for Curating the Archive and Iziko Museums. (2024)

Library of Babbling. Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town. 2022 Honours in Curatorship Fellows. In collaboration with Centre for Curating the Archive and Iziko Museums. (2022)

Everything is a Field Trip. WIP Collective: Tamale, Kumasi, and Accra, Ghana. Supported by the NIHSS Catalytic Research Programme. A research residency engaging in knowledge exchanges, alternative forms of knowledge production, and curation as a medium. Featuring encounters with Blaxtarlines, Exitframe, Soul Six, and pIAR. (2022)

2026

Hear her Calendar system a year of Thirteen months. Bianca Baldi at Lunchtime Lecture, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. (2 May 2026)

Some Spirits Need a Re-introduction. By Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka, Founder of Modzi Arts. at Lunchtime Lecture, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. (14 April 2026)

2025

Uncertainty: CERN Art and Science Summit 2025. CERN Science Gateway, Geneva, Switzerland. (5 February 2025)

2022

Artists Talk. Kamil Hassim and Ian Purnell in conversation with Dr. Tebogo George Mahashe. University of Cape Town. (26 April 2022)

2021

Art Meets: Art meets astronomy. Artist Rohini Devasher and astrophotographer Ajay Talwar. Hosted by Jennifer Khakshouri for Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. [Podcast].

Art Talk. Dr. George Mahashe. blaxTARLINES KUMASI: Project Space for Contemporary Art. 28 September 2021

Ngwana Wa Badimo O Bitšwa Ka Ditšhela’. Percussive intervention by Tlokwe Sehume with Motshepe Kgawane and Thabo Rapoo. (27 November 2021)

Scientists and Artists in Conversation: Interfacing New Heavens. The Javett Art Centre at The University of Pretoria. (22 July 2021)

2019

Doing other things –– an ambivalence to important work ––an attempt to go beyond ethnographic photographic archives and museums and their importance to the p​ost-colonial​question. Lagos Biennial Curatorial Intensive. Omenka Gallery, Lagos Nigeria. 29 November 2019.

Kamil Hassim

Bio

Kamil Adam Hassim is a trans-disciplinary artist and researcher whose practice operates at the intersection of art, frontier science, and indigenous knowledge systems. His work investigates how unseen information—whether physical, cultural, or social—is encoded, mediated, and made perceptible through instruments, networks, and cultural paradigms.

1. Connect South Africa 2021

Connect South Africa marks the first international residency under Connect, a collaborative framework between CERN and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia. Between 2021 and 2024, this platform fosters artistic experimentation in connection with fundamental science. South Africa is the inaugural country in Connect’s international editions, which includes joint residencies with scientific organisations to be announced yearly.

EXHIBITIONS:

Spectra I

Spier Light Art Festival 24’

Spier Wine Farm, Stellenbosch

1 March - 1 April 2024

Blurb: Spectra I, is an iteration from Kamil’s ongoing ‘Event Horizon’ project emerging from his Connect South Africa residency. Born from a collaboration with the engineers and scientists working on SALT, the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere, ‘Event Horizon’ is an experimental optical installation exploring the nature of perception, observation and our relationship to the way that information organises itself in the world.

Spectra I is a custom optical instrument using defunct astronomical lenses to cast a rainbow suspended in space - including the main prism of the Cassegrain spectrograph from the 1.9m Telescope, the oldest operational telescope in Sutherland. Where once the prism was used to refract starlight and translate the details of interstellar data as stories to modern astronomers, in ‘Event Horizon’ it has been repurposed as an artistic instrument to express fundamental physics as an embodied immersive phenomenon.

Event Horizon

No. 4 Women's Jail at Constitution Hill.

Cnr Joubert St and Kotze St, Braamfontein

17 - 25 March 2023

Blurb: Event Horizon is an interdisciplinary project created in collaboration with artist Kamil Hassim and a team of engineers and scientists at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO). Central to the installation are "defunct" astronomical lenses repurposed to cast a rainbow suspended in space, including the main prism from the Cassegrain spectrograph, formerly part of the oldest operational telescope in Sutherland. The first iteration of the was project made in collaboration with the South African Astronomical observatory, wherewithall and Bulumko Mbete.

External link: https://uduqko.com/portfolio/event-horizon

Event Horizon II.

Pavilion Prototype 2

31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town

1-2 June 2023

Blurb: Event Horizon II, is an immersive exhibition by Kamil Hassim, created in collaboration with —defunct context. Drawing on research from CERN and SAAO, the exhibition explores the intersection of black hole physics, indigenous cosmologies, and modern African astronomy. Through the installation designed for "embodied knowledge," Hassim uses optical effects to bridge the gap between scientific theory and lived experience, inviting visitors to reconsider how cultural and physical systems preserve or lose information.

External link: https://uduqko.com/portfolio/event-horizon-ii

YONELA MAKOBA

Bio:

Yonela Makoba is a multidisciplinary artist from Mthatha, now based in Cape Town, South Africa. Holding a BSc in Environmental and Geographic Science from the University of Cape Town. Her practice encompasses photography, performance art, installation, mixed media, and printmaking, engaging deeply with themes of memory, indigenous knowledge systems, and the body. Makoba’s research investigates the intersections of personal and collective memory through an ethnographic lens.

Iti: Ritual Studies [2023-]

Blurb:

Straddling the worlds of performance art, photography, installation, mixed media, and

printmaking, Makoba’s artistic practice is rooted in homeplace, where she explores themes surrounding African spirituality, identity, lived experiences, rituals, Black sensuality, and the matriarchive.

Extended Text:

The concepts of home, ritual, and matriarchive culminated in Makoba’s final project for her Master’s degree, titled Iti: Ritual Studies (2024). The journey of collecting teabags for the ritual of tea making began for Makoba in 2023, driven by her desire to understand the ritual and its significance to her, especially since she was unable to perform it. Teabags then became the medium that Makoba uses to gather people and for the craft of quilting.

In the performance Iti: Ritual Studies, showcased at—defunct context Pavilion Prototype II, the making of Iti, the presence of ikhandlela (candle), and the application of white and brown ochre on the floor – and for a fleeting moment, you hear the intergenerational conversations between grandmothers, mothers, and aunts emerging at one of the rondavels in our homes while tea is being prepared eziko. In Makoba’s work, the ritual of making tea as women’s knowledge and the conversations in between are what she considers, drawing from Uhuru Phalafala’s (2020:733) literary work, the ‘matriarchive’ — matrilineal knowledges of resistance, encompassing the “wisdom, values, relational subjectivity, philosophies, and aesthetics” of grandmothers imparted to the younger generation about how to adopt a livingness and being that aligns with an African humanist ideology which deeply reveres ancestors and home.

Text credit:

Mpambani, S. (2025). Yonela Makoba: Home and the matriarchive. INK, 24/5, pp. 148–152. Available at: https://asai.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Yonela-Makoba.pdf

Projects:

Transire: an ode to —defunct context.

Pavilion Prototype 2

31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town

15 November 2025

Ritual Procession

Pavilion Prototype 2

31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town

28 November 2024

A ritual of the Conservation of Energy II

Pavilion Prototype 2

31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town

6 September 2024

Presented at the Live Arts Festival

In the second iteration of Iti: Ritual Studies, Yobela and Zizi Masizana layed thousand-year-old clay from District 6, took the silence that emerged during the offering at The Ramp, combining it with the first tea ritual (2023) and instead of conversation, 15 minutes is offered to collective silence, which asks: How do we listen to the silences and absences of history that are speaking their presences? - Walter Mignolo

A ritual of the Conservation of energy

Pavilion Prototype 2

31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town

November 2023

Yonela Makoba’s tea ritual is a practice of remembering, re-membering, and intimately being with oneself and the community in this world of poly-crises. The audience is invited to enter her space, share a cup of tea, and engage in conversation. This experiment asks you to witness energy moving from one form to another, to experience time while engaging with herbs (tea). It is intended to be a space for reflection, listening, and cultivating presence.

/Xam Fortuin

Bio:

/Xam Fortuin, is an emerging interdisciplinary artist, based in Cape Town, South Africa. Deeply inspired by his indigenous Southern African roots, his work speaks to his fierce passion for creativity, and a sense of connection to the Earth. The name, given to him through his ancestral calling, ‘/Xam’, is a name that carries the ancient origins of the peoples of Southern Africa. His connection to land, family and ancestry is filled with stories and lessons that find their way into his creative expressions. His work spans across disciplines, across mediums, and across boundaries - with explorations primarily in mixed media, sculpture, and film. His practice is guided by a strong foundation of values, revolutionary politics, and a spiritual connection to the cosmos.

PROJECT:

GROND STORIES [2024-]

residency with —defunct context at Iziko Museums.

-defunct context presents GROUND STORIES, as a forth coming experiment in the making of public space. Under the guidance of resident artist, /Xam Fortuin, participants are invited into an interactive process that contends with Audre Lorde’s assertion that “Caring for myself is not self - indulgence, it is an act of political warfare.” Taking Lorde’s statement into account, we will meditate through the practical implementations of care and collective modes of gathering to support that care.

PUBLICATION:

Grond Stories: Zine Offering

Pavilion Prototype 2

31-37 Orange Street, Cape Town

11 September 2024

Grond Stories zine reflecting an workshop at the —defunct context pavilion prototype II. The zine presents through documentation, /Xam’s travels to places like the Northern Cape, the Karoo and Robben Island. It offers some perspective into /Xam Fortuin’s creative process, through sketches and photographic documentation. Prompting moments of deep ontological observation that act as guidance in uncovering the steps of each journey.

WORKSHOPS:

Grond Stories

Orgins Centre

University of Witswaterstrand, Johannesburg

30 August 2025

Explore art as a way of being, as our ancestors once did, and engage with a creative process led by a collective vision. To get us into this state of oneness, we will begin with a gentle, energising session of Tai Chi and Qigong, guided by Lâoshī Michélle Festus. Then artist /Xam Fortuin, will introduce his practice and philosophy around art as a way of being, guiding us through audio-visual exercises that involve drawing and painting. You will work with natural materials collected from Aba Té Farm, which will be transformed into a sculptural installation. Become part of the growing story! Experience a grounding, creative process that will connect you to your mind, body and spirit.