Were It Not for Shadows …

Artists: Kemang Wa Lehulere, Haroon Gunn-Salie, Thania Petersen, Igshaan Adams, Unathi Mkonto, Berni Searle

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) presents Were It Not for Shadows …, a group exhibition centring the distinctive practices of six Cape Town-based artists who completed residencies at the Museum as part of the Koyo Kouoh Atelier between 2019 and 2025: Kemang Wa Lehulere, Laying Bare (2019); Haroon Gunn-Salie, Line in the Sand (2020); Thania Petersen, KASSARAM (2021); Igshaan Adams, Not Working; (Working Title) (2022); Unathi Mkonto, TO LET (2023); and Berni Searle, On Site (2024). Curated by Zeitz MOCAA Assistant Curator Dr Phokeng Setai, with assistance from fellows of the Zeitz MOCAA & University of the Western Cape (UWC) Fellowship Programme Bulelwa Kunene and Reem Aljeally, the exhibition brings together the installations, tapestries, sculptures, and photographic series that were prompted by, developed during, or emerged from the artists’ time in the Atelier. The exhibition opens on Thursday, November 12, 2026 and will be on view on Level 3 of the Museum until Sunday, August 29, 2027.

The title of this exhibition is drawn from a line in author Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s 1933 essay on traditional Japanese aesthetics, In Praise of Shadows. Widely regarded as a meditation on Japanese aesthetic philosophy, the text considers the beauty of shadow, subtlety and ambiguity. Reflecting on the interiors of traditional Japanese homes, Tanizaki contrasts these qualities with the intense illumination and clarity typically associated with Western modernity, writing, “Were it not for shadows, there would be no beauty.”

Through this formulation, Tanizaki proposes that beauty resides not in perfection, but in nuance, transience and restraint. Central to the text is a deliberate tension between absence and presence, modernity and tradition, and the lingering traces of the old world and the brashness of the new. In thinking with Tanizaki, the exhibition reflects on the passage of time, and the ways in which change can expand our understanding of the world around us. 

Dr Phokeng Setai remarked: “Were It Not for Shadows … pays homage to artistic process and to the quiet spaces of inquiry in which ideas are conceived, nurtured and transformed. It foregrounds work that has materialised through sustained exploration, away from the spectacle of public view—in the shadows. The title offers a reflection on the unseen labour of experimentation, the process of ideation, and the countless hours artists spend in the studio before their work enters the more visible realm of exhibition-making. The exhibition brings the practices of the six artists into relation, allowing multiple meanings and connections to emerge.”

Extending this interest in ambiguity and the refusal of fixed or resolved readings, the exhibition introduces a second conceptual framework: the Crystallist Manifesto. Written by members of the Crystallist School in Khartoum, Sudan, the Crystallist Manifesto reflects on time, knowledge, space, language, beauty, and the nature of artistic materials. Invoking the image of the crystal—its multiple facets and its capacity to refract and reflect light—the school rejects essentialist understandings of the world. Art, within this framework, is a crystallisation of plurality: no single point of view can contain the totality of truth. This approach reinforces the exhibition’s openness to multiple meanings and connections.

Rather than proposing definitive readings or conclusions, Were It Not for Shadows … offers a set of conceptual orientations through which the works might be encountered. Site-specific commissions and interventions into the Museum’s architecture and institutional context provide one point of entry, while engagements with embodied histories, socio-political aftermaths and the spiritual practices of South Africa’s multicultural landscape provide another. While authorial intent remains central to the works, these aesthetic and philosophical lenses allow interpretation to remain open, relational and shaped by context.

Were It Not for Shadows … forms part of Zeitz MOCAA’s ongoing series of in-depth, research-driven exhibitions that centre and contextualise the practices of artists from Africa and its diaspora, while engaging with Pan-African histories. The programme traces established and emerging artistic, socio-political and cultural entanglements to position Africa within a global context, and the world within the African context.

As a Pan-African and Pan-diasporic institution, Zeitz MOCAA remains committed to presenting and preserving contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, advancing art historical knowledge, supporting artists and strengthening its education programmes, while ensuring access for all.

Zeitz MOCAA’s curatorial and exhibition programming is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and BMW South Africa.