INVESTEC CAPE TOWN ART FAIR 2026: Group Show: Ana Malta, Barbara Wildenboer, Cássio Markowski, Ibrahim Bemba Kébé, Osvaldo Ferreira & Sanjo Lawal

Constellations of Listening

Inspired by the concept of listening, this curatorial project unfolds as a constellation of voices that explore how contemporary art can expand the very notion of listening beyond sound. Listening, here, is not passive: it is an active, embodied, and ethical gesture — a practice of attention that renders audible what is often disregarded, giving form to silences, resonances, and hidden memories.

The selection of artists — Ana Malta (Portugal, 1996), Barbara Wildenboer (South Africa, 1973), Cássio Markowski (Brazil, 1972), Ibrahim Bemba Kébé (Mali, 1996), Osvaldo Ferreira (Angola, 1980) and Sanjo Lawal (Nigeria, 1997) — establishes a transcontinental dialogue where tradition, identity, and experimentation converge. Each, from their symbolic and cultural territory, presents works that, more than being seen, demand to be listened to with attentiveness and presence. Ana Malta explores chromatic compositions that reverberate as visual rhythms, capturing the flows and cadences of the everyday. Barbara Wildenboer develops a practice that, combining analogue and digital processes, reflects on temporality, interconnectedness, and the ways in which humanity is shaped by globalisation, crises, and the vulnerabilities of the present. Cássio Markowski invokes memory and ancestry, creating fragmented bodies that echo buried collective narratives. Ibrahim Bemba Kébé draws on the cultural wisdom of the Korèdugaw, transfiguring it into plastic gestures resonating between tradition and contemporaneity. Osvaldo Ferreira addresses the continuities and fractures of Angolan life, where fabric, colour, and texture become reverberations of cultural heritage. Finally, Sanjo Lawal creates vibrant photographic images that interrogate the intergenerational transmission of tradition, composing an imagistic territory that pulses between spirituality and the immediacy of the present.

This project is not confined to the presentation of works. It configures a space of expanded listening, where seeing and hearing intertwine. It resists the immediacy of answers, proposing instead pauses, intervals, and echoes that open up space for reflection. In so doing, it creates the conditions for an active engagement with art and with narratives that only emerge when one truly, deeply, chooses to listen.