We Chose to Listen: An iQHAWE Debrief on Presence, Pressure & Power at Cape Town Investec Art Fair
Written by Anastatia Nkhuna
Soooooo…the art fair is over. The booths are packed away and the overstimulation has finally quietened. What’s just begun is the iQHAWE Magazine debrief. No pressure, just presence.
Listening, in its truest form, is an active and intentional practice about receiving, unpacking, interrogating, responding, and holding onto what matters. It’s about catching what was said and what lingered in the silences.
At a time when everyone is racing to react, post, and conclude, we’re choosing to slow down and listen properly to the work, the conversations, the questions raised, and the feelings that followed us home. This debrief isn’t about summarising what happened. It’s about understanding what it means.
How effectively did the Listen curatorial concept resonate across the art fair this year? Did you feel it shaped deeper engagement with artworks and artists?
Renaé: I’ll be honest in my response here, the more literal interpretations of the theme threw me off slightly. I found myself searching for booths that approached it in a more metaphorical, layered way rather than addressing it at face value. I was hoping to encounter work that stretched the theme, complicated it, or reimagined it in ways that felt less direct and more interpretive.
Because of that, I struggled to fully connect with some of the presentations. It wasn’t necessarily a reflection of the quality of the work, but rather of how I personally engage with themes, I tend to be drawn to subtlety, symbolism, and conceptual nuance over literal translation.
So it’s a different kind of question to answer. My response is less about what was “good” or “bad,” and more about where I felt resonance and in this case, I found myself searching for that resonance a bit more than I expected.
Anastatia: A theme like this should have acted as a clear anchor for the work I encountered. Instead, I experienced several missed opportunities particularly from galleries that treated listening as a surface-level gesture, reduced to headsets in booths.
Listening could have been stripped back, imagined as a living soundscape: the fair humming, layering, breathing like a market. Yet the buzz grew louder and louder as I moved through the space, accumulating into noise rather than meaning. In that volume, it became increasingly difficult to truly resonate with the work through the sensorial framework the theme promised.
Hlengiwe: I’ll answer the question from an internal interpretation. For me, Listen became less about sound and or how the artworks/curation drew from that, and instead was more about presence; me, here, now.
The fair is loud in all of its components, that being visually, socially, and commercially. So for me, navigating the space means trying to practise a quieter kind of listening, where I allow myself to be in my little world and block out everything else around me.
Renae what drew you to signs and symbols as something you were searching for?
Renae: I don’t know if this is a reflection of where I am mentally, but as I walked through the space, I kept noticing symbols and abstract drawings across different pieces that felt connected by an invisible thread. I couldn’t shake the sense that it was all somehow interconnected, like the lines on a person’s palm mirroring the lines of tree roots stretching into the earth.
What I loved most was that this symbolism wasn’t tied to a single artist, but emerged through universal motifs linking the works. Whether through historical context or shared techniques, there was a quiet dialogue running through the exhibition. I really loved that.
Hlengiwe what’s up with your obsession with portraiture this year?
Hlengiwe: Maybe not quite an obsession, but a face is easily recognisable, therefore a straightforward and immediate pull. It’s also always fun to see the face being seen and translated so differently on varying mediums. A very interesting installation I saw was that of Alka Dass’, who showed with the Lemkus Gallery. From afar, the work is horizontally mounted wooden cabinet-like structures. When you come closure, it is a caynotyope photograph of a family fragmented in the cabinets, others open, others closed.
Another intrigue was what I’d categorise as the “whimsy”. I saw a lot of works that felt somewhat playful and surreal in the same breath. That approach from artists like Ini Usoro, Kylie Wentzel, Kirsten Sims, and Tshepiso Moropa pulled in in for sure. With Tshepiso, I’ve always loved how she translate folk storytelling through her collage and art films, with her compositions having a dreamlike quality that carries oral histories intimately and rhythmacally.
This year I made a choice to eavesdrop on conversations at the art fair to keep my ear on the ground. A gentleman asked someone “If you removed all wall texts and price lists, which works would still survive on feeling alone?” What is that art work for you?
Hlengiwe: I was quite drawn to 2 specific artworks because they felt like comfort and breathing, interesting that they are both textile artworks with muted tones. One of them held softness and airyness in its palette and a spatial openness through the composition of the glass beads and colour usage, that being Bulumko Mbete’s Khanyisile III. The other carried a feeling of being pulled, stretched yet still held, which all made me want to freefall onto the stitched and quilted padded panels — Thulile Gamadze’s vagal outflow.
Now that I think about my connection to both artworks, it seems I may have had a desire to fly.
Renaé: I will say feelings and vibes, I love how those two always go together in most of my decision processing. I tend to respond instinctively first, and then intellectually afterwards. The work that resonated with me most was Anonymous Member 56600, Glass Pearl Beads by Ronél de Jager. There was something deeply compelling about it. If money were no object, I would have swiped for it immediately.
Hearing about the process behind the piece made it even more meaningful. It felt like a true labour of love, meticulous, patient, and intimate. Knowing the care embedded in its making added another layer of connection for me. It’s the kind of work I could imagine living with not just as an artwork on a wall, but as something that inhabits a space with you. I could see it in my home, in a quiet corner, becoming part of the emotional texture of an intimate space.
Anastatia: For me it would be Manyaku Mashilo’s “Here I Saw My Ancestors First” . I am drawn emotionally to artists that draw from personal and familial archives to explore memory, matrilineal inheritance, and spiritual continuity.
Her line work and layers and repetition makes her work feel intimate. I also think I’m connected to her because of our Limpopo heritage and by the presence of growing up spiritually knowing that grandmothers are spiritual guides and caretakers.
The figures carry gestures of ritual, protection, and remembrance across generations and I really cannot next to that.
Galleries often follow the same format , white wall and text. Which spatial / display design impressed you most?
Anastatia: Cape Town based painter and illustrator Kirsten Sims ‘In The Wings’ was the most fun booth for me. The little figures that leaked out of the paintings were fascinating to me. The leaking made it feel as though they would exhale with a sigh of relief and freedom from the constriction of the canvas. Kirsten used her use of free will beautifully.
Hlengiwe: I am always drawn to works that nostalgically call me back to my childhood, and it’s always exciting to see memories as shared and communal rather than individual. Hoek Swaratle’s booth with Occupying Gallery titled “This House Is Not 4 Sale!” was my favourite.
I stood in front of an installed window that was exactly like the one from my childhood home; the reddish-brown frame with visible rust, the ill-painted white ornamental metal grilles, the visible putty attempting to keep the windows in place, all placed against a mirrored-glass that reflected back at me. Ha!
Renaé: I loved Occupying The Gallery’s presentation, “This House Is Not 4 Sale! Booth TT8.” Apart from resonance with the subject matter, Ir, it brought a deeply compelling perspective into the space. What stood out to me was how the booth shifted across the days I attended each iteration representing a different angle on the central theme. The focus on title deeds, an issue often experienced within very specific historical and socio-political contexts, felt especially powerful when staged in that environment. The work transformed the booth itself into a kind of living signifier. The repeated declaration “This House Is Not 4 Sale!” operated not just as a statement, but as a symbol of resistance, ownership, memory and familial trauma. In that context, the structure became more than a display,it became a sign pointing to deeper histories of land, displacement, and belonging. I loved the incredible thoughtful and effective use of space.
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