Curator's Selection

"Painted across the long rains of 2024, Songs of the Iroko begins with the artist's grandmother — a woman who spoke to trees the way others speak to elders."

"Mokoena began this work after spending six months mapping the routes her family travelled during the forced removals of the 1960s."

"Woven on a four-heddle loom that has been in the Asante family for three generations, this cloth carries the Adweneasa motif — 'my skill is exhausted' — traditionally reserved for the moment a master weaver acknowledges they have given the loom everything they know."

"Each panel encodes a Zulu love-letter, the historic isishunka beadwork system in which colour and pattern speak where words may not."