Stellenbosch Triennale 2025
19 February 2025
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30 April 2025
The Stellenbosch Triennale will be held in Stellenbosch from the 19th of February to the 30th of April 2025. The theme for the next triennale is BA’ZINZILE: A REHEARSAL FOR BREATHING.
UKU’ZINZA: an invocation from the Nguni people that speaks to being grounded, being calm. Stillness is a mechanism for survival, a strategy for imagination, and an ability and persistence. In a world losing its breath, where breathlessness pervades, we witness the tremors in our bodies and the depths we must dive to sustain life. This exhibition explores Breath and Breathing through states of duress and ongoing extractions, using Rehearsal as a mode of Improvised philosophies.
Breath: Breathing is a fundamental act: taking air into the lungs and expelling it, exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide. Breath manifests in various forms: puff, pant, gasp, wheeze, blow, sigh, impart, imbue, transfuse, murmur, whisper, utter. Breathing is about continuing, persisting, insisting, remaining, holding, being present, and having a place. How have our breath been disturbed, disrupted and dislocated? How have we sustained ourselves throughout these interruptions?
Breathing through States of Duress: We breathe through the duress of histories of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid, wars and ongoing genocides, wounded by its impacts and suffocating under its weight. Yet, we Insist, on finding ways to Improvise our breath, our Aliveness, and our existence.
Respiration: Breathing in states of duress and harm, ukuphefumla ngenxeba – to breathe through the wound. How our lungs enact somatic breathing by tracing the vascular systems of survival, cultural recovery, hope, courage, and strength in the quest to stay in the rhythm of our breath and thus life. Ukuphefumla – to breathe, umphefumlo – the spirit, attends to a place of altered and interrupted destiny. The compositions of how to breathe in breathlessness are embodied in toyi-toyi, the southern African dance used in political protests or in voguing movements used in queer culture - the life that pulses in exaltation below our feet, opening a portal to Aliveness. This practice of breathing in situ, being in ritual with oneself, is a profound expression of insistence.
Rehearsal: A rehearsal is a session of exercise, a drill, a dry run, or a practice in preparation for a ceremony. It involves repetition to align, figuring out interpretation, mapping pathways, and creating contingency plans. It is an attempt or experiment to reveal something about the world in the near future time.
Improvisation, Jazz and the Black Tradition: Improvisation serves as a compass—composing, arranging, and executing without preparation. It involves off-the-cuff creativity, imagination, and skill mastery. It’s about creating rhythms and frequencies, composing notes from the haikus of our existence. Jazz, as a Black tradition of improvisation, is birthed from ancient traditions of wailing. This reappears through horn instruments that require a deep breath, mimicking the throat as a vocal cord. Jazz embodies the mode of rehearsal as improvised philosophies, crafting compositions on how to breathe in breathlessness where even wailing is a form of breathing!
Curatorial Statement
BA’ZINZILE: A Rehearsal for Breathing.
ST2025 | From The Vault
The From the Vault exhibition of the Triennale sits in conversation with the In the Current and On the Cusp exhibitions on a timeline that situates artistic practices between past, present and future. In recognising what has come before, From the Vault engages with individual or institutional art collections from the past. These collections offer critical insights into the role and power of both the artist and the collector in shaping narratives and discourses ranging from aesthetic values, art history themes to anthropological, sociological…
ST2025 | In the Current
Artists are invited from different parts of the continent and the world, and through their work we can explore, examine, interrogate, question, view and experience the present. Exhibition making as a Rehearsal: positioning the Triennale as a rehearsal for the actions and changes we aspire to enact in the real world. This exhibition is a rehearsal for breathing — Breathing is holy. Art becomes an infrastructure of care, posing the question: if death is the given condition, how do we…
ST2025 | On the Cusp
An exhibition of artworks by 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…
Participating Artists
Exhibitions
Featured Artworks
Khanyisile Mbongwa
ST2020 + ST2025
Chief Curator
Khanyisile Mbongwa is the Chief Curator of the Stellenbosch Triennale, an independent curator, award-winning artist, and sociologist based in Cape Town. Her work focuses on public space, interdisciplinary practices, and unpacking socio-political, economic, and gender-queer complexities. In 2018, she completed a curatorial research residency at CAT in Germany, which led to the exhibition BLUEPRINT: Where There’s Nowhere To Go, Where Is Home?. Khanyisile is also Adjunct Curator for Performative Practices at Norval Foundation and Curatorial Advisor for Cape Town Carnival.
Dr Mike Tigere Mavura
ST2020 + ST2025
Assistant Curator
Dr Mike Mavura is an independent art curator, cultural strategist, and educator with a PhD in Political Science. His multidisciplinary work spans curatorial projects like the Stellenbosch Triennale and education roles at institutions such as Rhodes University and the University of Bergen. He is currently developing Pamurove, a learning site in Zimbabwe where art and design intersect with ecology and agrarian practices, reflecting his dedication to thoughtful civic engagement and cultural education.
Curatorial Team
Gallery
ST2025 is brought to you by Outset Contemporary Art Fund and many more