From the Vault exhumes archives and engages with buried museum collections as a critical resource to contextualise and map contemporary society and culture. It concerns itself with exhuming work that has long gathered dust in museum memory, bringing these works to the surface as an unravelling of history, an undoing of narratives.

The exhibition represents a critical engagement with time by browsing through historical acquisitions, examining their significance as fragments of the past and showing how museum vaults can be a compass for the future. From the Vault is a looking back, a narrative alignment in service to our imagination and a way to work with memory as a future possibility.

This inaugural exhibition examines the university art collections from Stellenbosch University and the University of Fort Hare, forms part of the education programme and will focus on history of art and art as a mirror to society.

Curators: Mike Tigere Mavura and Gcotyelwa Mashiqa

Location: Stellenbosch University Museum – 52 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch

Opening hours:

• Mon – Fri 09:30 – 16:30

• Sat – 08:00 – 12:30

• Sun – CLOSED

Made possible by Strauss & Co

When emancipation is professed, we may seem to have been at journeys for so long that we become complacent with the paths we traverse. To speak of tomorrow when yesterday is to be birthed today, to propose fixity when flux is the stuff of life.

And the songs of praise, too early to be fully formed, fall from lips that cannot fathom the depths from which to evoke tribute, not when we say, but why we say what we say…

To speak about something even before it comes into being suggests clairvoyance, not of the prophetic type. Yet, speak we must, for it has become habit. For whom acts of deliberation and patience are no longer virtues, what needs to be done always needs to be done, damning all costs. …tomorrow, there will be more of us…

And so, 20 artists are invited from different parts of the continent and through their work we can explore, examine, interrogate, question, view and experience the present.

Curators: Khanyisile Mbongwa and Dr. Bernard Akoi-Jackson

Location: The Woodmill Lifestyle Centre – Vredenburg Road Devon Valley, Stellenbosch

Opening hours:

• Tues – Fri 10:00 – 18:00

• Sat – 10:00 – 16:00

• Sun – 10:00 – 14:00

• Mon CLOSED

African storytellers, if their craft is to have value, need to re-text the narrative process and their engagement with the perspectives offered by a deliberate exploration of ‘other’ and ‘self’. How we navigate conceptions of freedom in motion picture need to be dictated by an inherent ‘knowing’; of history, of connections to ancestry and of rich cultural contexts.

The work in this exhibition and film festival responds to the shifting landscape of visual engagement. With our interrupted history in frame, the artists make it apparent that the most effective approach to expanding the medium of visual art is… Whatever we want. BUT, it is important, however, to remain in dialogue with existing mediums; ones that have served different functions on the continent: what was and is already here.

Location: Voorgelegen, 116 Dorp Street, Stellenbosch

Opening hours:

• Mon – Fri 09:00 – 16:00

• Sat – 10:00 – 16:00

• Sun  – 10:00 – 14:00

An exhibition of artworks by 10 young African artists, On the Cusp is about revealing and unraveling the creative talents of tomorrow. Focused on graduating visual art students and young art practitioners who have pushed their creative boundaries and sit on the cusp of beauty and magic through their aesthetic, conceptual, critical, material choice, form or installation methods. On The Cusp is a point of transition between two different states; a pointed curve where two ends meet; an intersection of creative elements. It is looking at the present and seeing what the creative promises to deliver to the future through their imagination and innovation.

Curator: Dr. Bernard Akoi-Jackson

Location: Libertas Parva (Little Libertas), 25-33 Dorp Street, Stellenbosch

Opening hours:

• Tues – Fri 10:00 – 18:00

• Sat – 10:00 – 16:00

• Sun – 10:00 – 14:00

• Mon CLOSED

Made possible by Distell

Die Braak Pavilion 

Our life-giving armature

The inaugural Die Braak Pavilion is situated on the Braak, Stellenbosch’s town square. Ironically, the name means fallow land, a description often used in post-apocalyptic art and movies. If we do not care for our planet it eventually will become "Braak." Echoing the triennial theme "Tomorrow there will be more of us", the intervention invited participants to ultimately determine the aesthetic of the pavilion, just as our choices will determine the "tomorrow" of our planet. 

The pavilion is a fusion between the disciplines of public art, sculpture and architecture. The pavilion can be considered the 'armature' or skeleton which keeps the conceptual notions upright and 'grows' throughout the triennial as people participate in its making. An afterlife for the pavilion is envisaged: as a playground for a crèche or perhaps a shading device for local crafters. Conversations around everyday materials and their afterlives are integral to the message the pavilion portrays.

The notion of 'embodied experience', explained by architectural theorist Juhaani Pallasma as a full sensory experience in time and place, is the foundation of the pavilion. It is intended as a space to be experienced, to be interacted with and contributed to.

By providing only the armature as a defined structure, the pavilion encourages local artists and the community to participate in the filling of the pavilion. Waste materials such as discarded fishing nets, ropes, plastic bags and nylon packaging will be woven and knotted as infill material. The reuse of waste material will communicate the value of waste and the future of a waste economy. The pavilion stands as a metaphor for the future of our planet's depleting resources and the value of what we today refer to as "waste".

By assuming the role of facilitator, rather than that of the author, the architects allow the edifice to become a catalyst for a larger message belonging to the greater community.

The participatory process of the inaugural architectural pavilion will be documented as testimony to the potential for symbiosis between creatives and observers, the planet and the people.

Curator: Pieter Matthews

Braak Pavillion made possible by CS Property.

“We Cannot Arrest The Sound”

Tracing sound and sonic scapes as archive and knowledge production is a way to engage with music and songs as a connection through time; a map holding old memories and future stories.

Through African AD we explore African sounds and dancing as a constant connection and conversation with the cosmos. We examine how movement breathes life into things, how it is a call to maintain an equilibrium between reverie and reality. If music is an expression of spirit, then performance is spirit embodied. African AD thus explores the congregation of sounds and vibrations that permeate Africa by inviting artists, musicians, DJ’s to search the archives and put into composition their encounters and experiences via this platform.

Curator: Khanyisile Mbongwa

Various locations throughout Stellenbosch

Opening times:

• Friday 24 April – 19:00 – 00:00

• Saturday 25 April – 19:00 – 00:00

• Open to the public – Free entrance