SABC Art Collection

SABC Art Collection One of the most extensive, broadly representative collections of South African art in the world, the SABC Art Collection comprises more than 1 000 artworks
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One of the most extensive, broadly representative collections of South African art in the world, the SABC Art Collection comprises more than 1 000 artworks, celebrating the immense diversity and depth of local creative expression – both historical and contemporary. In curatorial approach, we strive to be representative across categories of race, gender, historical period, style and medium. We seek

to evoke emotion and inspire debate. The pluralism and diversity of expression voiced through the Collection speak of the SABC’s inclusive, democratic approach to broadcasting.

A major exhibition of works by Diane Victor .victor opened this week at the Comtesse de Caen Pavilion of the Académie de...
10/04/2026

A major exhibition of works by Diane Victor .victor opened this week at the Comtesse de Caen Pavilion of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris, in recognition of her having been awarded the 10th Mario Avati Engraving Prize last year. ‘Through her powerful and engaging works, South African artist Diane Victor explores social and political tensions, pushing the boundaries of print with a unique mastery of trait and techniques,’ reads the statement of the exhibition, which runs until 31 May 2026.

Running concurrently a few metres away at the 100-year-old Galerie Larock-Granoff , is Victor’s solo exhibition ‘Fallen Heads’. ‘To kick off the month of drawing, we are excited to showcase a body of work that powerfully explores the boundary between humanity and animality,’ says the curatorial statement. ‘Through charcoal, candle-smoke, and soot, Diane Victor captures the ephemeral. At the crossroads of the political and the symbolic, her work disturbs, fascinates, and questions our times.’

Born in 1964 in the mining town of Witbank, Victor grew up during Apartheid. A graduate of Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, she has established herself today as one of the major figures of the contemporary art scene, recognised for the power and unflinching complexity of her work, in which physical, psychological and sexual violence are recurring themes.

Victor first visited France in 1985 on an Anya Millman scholarship and, in 1988, she spent 10 months at the Cité Internationale des Arts as the winner of the, then, Volkskas, now, ABSA L’Atelier Award.

The SABC Art Collection is proud to house numerous artworks by Victor. These include Blind Justice [Frame #1], Glue Boys [ #2], Why Defy [ #3] and All for the Right Price [ #4] from her series ‘Disasters of Peace’ Part I (2001–2003), inspired by Francisco Goya’s ‘Disasters of War’.

Photographs of the Academy of Fine Arts exhibition [Frames #5 & 6] are by Patrick Rimond.

South African photographer Jo Ractliffe currently has a solo exhibition on at Jeu de Paume in Paris. Curated by Pia Vi...
26/03/2026

South African photographer Jo Ractliffe currently has a solo exhibition on at Jeu de Paume in Paris. Curated by Pia Viewing, ‘En ces lieux / Out of Place’ runs in tandem with ‘Global Warming’, an exhibition by British social documentary photographer Martin Parr, who died in December 2025.

Situated in the heart of Paris, in the Tuileries Gardens, Jeu de Paume, a centre for art and international creation, is a landmark site for the presentation of images of the 20th and 21st centuries, ranging from photography to cinema, and from video to installation and online creation.

‘Ractliffe is […] known for her quiet yet penetrating examinations of landscape, memory, and the lingering aftermaths of conflict,’ reads the exhibition statement. ‘Over four decades, her work has explored how histories—particularly those shaped by war, displacement, and apartheid—imprint themselves on the terrain. Ractliffe’s photographs resist the immediacy of the journalistic documentary image; instead, they approach the world obliquely, revealing meaning through absence, nuance, and the stark, poetic atmosphere that emanates from certain situations.’

The SABC Art Collection houses seven artworks by Ractliffe—among them three images from her 1988 series ‘Nadir’ in which she combined photocopies, sketches, and collage to arrive at final compositions, which she printed using layers of photolithography, varnish and screenprint. She combined photographs of aggressive dogs (signs of violence and brutal police control) with images of squatter camps, forced removals, relocation settlements, and rubbish dumps to transmit a dystopian sense of the fear and anger that held sway during the states of emergency that were imposed by the apartheid government in the late 1980s. Ractliffe has described ‘Nadir’ as ‘a way to image this world gone mad, without simply reiterating the discourse of resistance’.

‘Out of Place’ runs until 24 May 2026.

The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, ‘In Minor Keys’, conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh, will...
17/03/2026

The 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, ‘In Minor Keys’, conceived by the late Koyo Kouoh, will be opening on 9 May 2026, and will be installed across the Giardini, Arsenale and other locations in Venice.

‘In looking to artists working in Salvador, Dakar, San Juan, Beirut, Paris, or Nashville, Koyo sought to envision how their ingenuity, breadth of material experimentation, and visionary ideas bear connections to other artists and movements in simultaneity,’ reads an official statement. ‘In this spirit, “In Minor Keys” expands upon Koyo’s relational geography of encounters with artists over her lifetime.’

The following artists from Southern Africa are among the 111 individual artists, collaborative duos, collectives and artist-led organisations invited to participate in the exhibition: Nolan Oswald Dennis; Nicholas Hlobo; Senzeni Mthwakhazi Marasela; Georgina Maxim; Thania Petersen; Johannes Phokela; Berni Searle; Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi; Buhlebezwe Siwani; Kemang Wa Lehulere; and Billie Zangewa.

The SABC Art Collection is proud to house artworks by six of these artists. A work from the Collection by each artist is featured here: Hlobo ‘Isisindo samadlozi’ (2006); Marasela, ‘Theodora III’ (2005); Phokela, ‘Exaltation Allegory’ (1998); Searle, ‘Still, Passing By, 3’ (2005); Sebidi, ‘We Have Worked’ (1994); Zangewa, ‘Hm… Oh!’ (2006).

Following Kouoh’s passing, the exhibition continues in the spirit of her vision through the dedicated team she assembled: advisors Rasha Salti, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo; editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter; and research assistant Rory Tsapayi. Wolff Architects were appointed by Kouoh to realise the design and scenography for ‘In Minor Keys’—a phrase inspired by music, referencing the quieter, more emotional and intimate tones.

We note with regret and concern that there will be no South African national pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, following Minister of Sport, Arts and Culture Gayton McKenzie’s withdrawal of funding and support for the selected artwork, ‘Elegy’, by Gabrielle Goliath, which addresses femicide and genocide.

17/03/2026

Throwback to the opening of Still We Rise: Artworks from the Ifa Lethu and SABC Art Collections, which ran at The Atrium, Keyes Art Mile, Johannesburg from 30.10.25 to 23.11.25.

SABC CEO Nomsa Chabeli gives voice to the mission and values that are the lifeblood of the SABC Art Collection.

We’re honoured to partner with the repatriated Ifa Lethu Collection to exhibit a selection of anti-apartheid resistance ...
24/10/2025

We’re honoured to partner with the repatriated Ifa Lethu Collection to exhibit a selection of anti-apartheid resistance art works from both collections at Keyes Art Mile until the 23rd November. Please join us for the opening.

Gerhard Marx’s solo exhibition ‘Landscape Would Be the Wrong Word’ is currently showing at Everard Read Gallery . From...
22/09/2025

Gerhard Marx’s solo exhibition ‘Landscape Would Be the Wrong Word’ is currently showing at Everard Read Gallery . From delicate labyrinthine structures to tectonic earthen constructions, these finely wrought sculptures, reconfigured map works and filigree plant drawings ‘pulse with energy and are like portals to new realms’.

Expanding on the title of the exhibition, Marx comments, ‘Instead of making a landscape, I’m making a place.’

‘You feel you could step into them: reach forward, rotate these three-dimensional planes of maps and plants, expand them, inhabit them,’ reads the curatorial statement.

By folding, cutting and re-assembling maps, the artist deconstructs the way they shape our view of the world and proposes new spatial possibilities and meanings.

Marx has long be drawn to dismantling and reconstituting maps, and the SABC Art Collection is proud to house one of his earlier reconfigured map works, ‘Horizontal Figure’ (2005) [Detail, Frame # 1]. Also in the Collection is a photographic contact print titled ‘Bird with Stars’ (2007) [Frame # 2] and ‘Claudiograph’ (2008), a work composed of weeds, watercolour and glue on paper [Frame # 3].

Marx continues to work with gathered plant matter—dried nasturtium stems, hydrangea heads and poppy stalks—to build delicate otherworldly surfaces.

The panels of his new bronzes are cast from the Karoo ground—precise imprints of the rugged surface of the Earth.

‘What links all these works is their immediacy and vitality,’ reads the exhibition text. ‘They resist flat description, conjuring layered, immersive spaces charged with possibility.’

Marx’s exhibition runs until 1 November 2025.

‘Mercurial Map’, 2025, cut and reconfigured map fragments on aluminium, 140 x 160 x 29 cm. [Frame # 4]

‘Lattice’, 2025, bronze, 80 x 65 x 3 cm. [Frame # 5]

‘Wilding Drawing’, 2025, plant material, tissue paper, and acrylic ground on canvas, 125 x 150 x 6.5 cm. [Frame # 6]

Currently on show is ‘One and the Many’, a daring new exhibition by guest curator Storm Janse Van Rensburg in collabora...
21/07/2025

Currently on show is ‘One and the Many’, a daring new exhibition by guest curator Storm Janse Van Rensburg in collaboration with Javett-UP’s curatorial team. Constellations of artworks explore the ways in which artists narrate the relationship between the individual and the collective, or self and others.

Six invited artists – Stephané E Conradie, Goldendean, Ledelle Moe, Abdus Salaam, Inga Somdyala and Katlego Tlabela – have large-scale artworks in dialogue with three Javett-UP collections: the South32 Collection, the Javett Family Collection and the Bongi Dhlomo Collection.

Visitors are greeted by a site-specific commission by Inga Somdyala, which soars from the ground floor through the atrium spaces.

In the first chapter, ‘Living School’, the artwork groupings explore abstract impulses, musings on spirituality and religion, and the complex intimacies between humans and the natural world.

The second features artworks by Tshwane-based artist Katlego Tlabela whose connection to black South African art histories is explored through the inclusion of artworks significant to his journey, such as Gerard Sekoto’s ‘Song of the Pick’ (1946). Goldendean’s voluptuous, sensual ‘Soft Vxns’ (2021) dialogues with works by Mme Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Tracey Rose and Adriene Piper, among others. Fragility, the safety of home and making new objects from fragments is central to Stephané E Conradie’s sculptures and wall-based works, which dialogue with serial works by Jane Alexander, Willie Bester and Sam Nhlengethwa, among others.

‘Colossal Time’ includes two large-scale, bodily concrete sculptures by Ledelle Moe, a video work by Abdus Salaam exploring the metaphysicality of water, and Jeremy Wafer’s photographic series ‘Antholes’ (1998), which explores monumentality and collective action.

The SABC Art Collection is proud to house artworks by several of the featured artists, including Ezrom Legae, William Kentridge, Bonnie Ntshalintshali, Dumile Feni, Louis Maqhubela, Harold Rubin, Ernest Mancoba, Durant Sihlali, Goldendean, Mme Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Tracey Rose, Jane Alexander, Willie Bester, Sam Nhlengethwa and Jeremy Wafer.

‘Miss January’, a 1997 painting by South African artist Marlene Dumas, recently sold for over $13.6 million (R243 millio...
03/06/2025

‘Miss January’, a 1997 painting by South African artist Marlene Dumas, recently sold for over $13.6 million (R243 million) at a Christie’s auction in New York, setting a new record for a living female artist. In this magnum opus work, which stands 2.82-metres high, Dumas revisits ‘Miss World’, an artwork depicting 10 models, that she painted 30 years earlier at the age of 10.

Dumas was raised in Kuils River in the Western Cape and studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, before relocating to the Netherlands in 1976, and studying Painting and Psychology at the University of Amsterdam. Her figurative paintings are inspired by personal memories and a diverse array of printed matter including Polaroid photographs, newspaper and magazine cuttings, letters, and Flemish paintings. Race, sexuality, guilt and innocence, violence and tenderness are recurring themes in her work.

There are two works by Dumas in SABC Art Collection. ‘Faceless’ (1993) is one of a limited edition of 200 silkscreen prints that accompanied her 1993 solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Dumas’ artworks are often frankly erotic, exploring themes of sexuality, love, death, and shame. Central to her practice is the human figure—often naked or partially clothed. Painted from photographs, Dumas’ models strike Playboy-style poses: backside in the air, or crouched down naked in high-heeled boots, face raised suggestively, or peeling off one stocking in a silk-gloved hand. Yet, in this work, the face and breasts of the female figure are covered up as if in a gesture of shame. Reflecting the viewer’s desire for total exposure back at them, it is a work that poses questions about the potential for abuse in the power of the gaze.

‘Agter Die Nag Bedrieglik Die Dood’ [Behind the Night, Deceptively Death] (1982) is a meditation on mortality’s capacity to energise the living. The brilliant blue of this lithograph defies the gloominess of the blunt tombstones hovering within a dark shape that repeats their form. The text in the image reads: ‘The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvellously.’

The SABC Art Collection team joins countless others across the world in mourning the loss of visionary curator Koyo Kouo...
02/06/2025

The SABC Art Collection team joins countless others across the world in mourning the loss of visionary curator Koyo Kouoh, who died on 10 May. Born in Douala, Cameroon, Kouoh was the Executive Director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town.

Last week, the Museum held a memorial service to honour her life and legacy. Rousing words and poignant memories were shared by speakers David Green, Jochen Zeitz, Albie Sachs, Liesl Hartman, Gavin Jantjes, Wangechi Mutu, Berni Searle, Thania Petersen and Bulelwa Kunene—each celebrating her extraordinary ingenuity, dynamism and passionate commitment to building spirited African diasporic communities of contemporary art practice.

In 2024, Kouoh made history as the first African woman to be named artistic director of the world’s most prestigious art exhibition. Last week, La Biennale di Venezia announced that it would be following her vision for the 61st International Art Exhibition, to be held from 9 May to 22 November 2026. Titled ‘In Minor Keys’, the exhibition will be realised exactly as she conceived it. For six months, Kouoh and her team—which includes advisors Gabe Beckhurst Feijoo, Marie Hélène Pereira, and Rasha Salti; editor-in-chief Siddhartha Mitter; and assistant Rory Tsapayi—worked intensively to shape the exhibition’s vision—developing its theoretical framework, selecting the participating artists and artworks, commissioning catalogue authors, defining its graphic identity and exhibition architecture, and engaging in close dialogue with the invited artists.

‘“In Minor Keys” invites audiences into a sensory and emotional realm, where quiet frequencies, poetic gestures, and intimate worlds offer a counterpoint to the dominant noise of global crisis and spectacle,’ reads the news announcement via C&. ‘Kouoh embraces the metaphor of the “minor keys”—in music, feeling, geography, and social practice—as a space of resilience, resistance, and relation.’

Rest in power, chère Madame Koyo.

Johannesburg – in all its fractured, shifting, dynamic, and jazzy dimensions – takes centre stage in the exhibition ‘Urb...
19/05/2025

Johannesburg – in all its fractured, shifting, dynamic, and jazzy dimensions – takes centre stage in the exhibition ‘Urban Entanglements: How Art Reflects Citymaking’. Currently on show at Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, this trifecta features a selection of paintings, drawings, and charcoal works on paper by three South African greats: the late David Koloane (1938–2019), Kagiso ‘Pat’ Mautloa , and Sam Nhlengethwa .nhlengethwa – all alumni of The Bag Factory artist studios in Fordsburg. The selected artworks span a period from the 1980s to the 2020s, from the final years of apartheid and into the unfolding 21st century.

Pictured here is a pairing of works by each artist – from the Goodman Gallery show and from the SABC Art Collection. In each instance, the work on show precedes the work held in the Collection.

Street Scene (1999) [Slide #1] is an iconic work by Koloane, whose charcoal drawings and mixed media works capture Johannesburg’s restless rhythm through expressive, gestural marks. Although ‘My Bike’ (2001) [Slide #2] touches on the same theme of transport, traffic, and movement through the congested city streets, it is a more unusual work in the context of Koloane’s oeuvre – a rare declaration of individual freedom and personhood by an artist whose work is more devotedly concerned with the collective struggles of the city’s Black residents to survive and thrive in the face of systemic oppression.

Mautloa, who continues to work from the Bag Factory, reflects on how Johannesburg’s landscape and collective psyche have been shaped by mining and the lingering effects of racially divided space. With its high contrasts and bold linework, ‘Portrait’ (2023) [Slide #3] is a jazzy work that transmits a sense of the multiple personalities one might adopt in the course of navigating and adapting to the divergent contexts of city life. Shackscape (1997) [Slide #4] is an abstract mixed-media, found-object painting that cites the industrial textures of urban life and the materiality of informal settlements in which dwellings are knocked together from sheets of salvaged metal. [Read on in comments…]

Gerard Sekoto’s ‘Self Portrait’ (1947) is currently emblazoned across the façade of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. His pa...
31/03/2025

Gerard Sekoto’s ‘Self Portrait’ (1947) is currently emblazoned across the façade of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. His painting takes pride of place on the exhibition poster and catalogue cover of ‘Paris Noir’ / ‘Black Paris’, which runs until 30 June 2025.

‘Black Paris’ retraces the presence and influence of Black artists in France from the 1950s to 2000. It offers a vibrant immersion into cosmopolitan Paris, a place of resistance and creation that gave rise to a wide variety of practices, from a new awareness of identity to the search for transcultural artistic languages.

Sekoto (1913 – 1993), who was both an artist and a musician, is recognised as a pioneer of South African 20th-century modernism and social realism. He was born at the Lutheran Mission Station in Botshabelo, in the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). From an early age, he favoured painting and drawing as his chosen medium of expression. He attended Grace Dieu Diocesan Teachers' Training College, in Pietersburg (now Polokwane), where he took art classes and was mentored by Ernest Mancoba.

After spending four years as a teacher, he left Mpumalanga to pursue his full-time art career, living and working first in Sophiatown, Johannesburg (1938 – 42), then in District Six, Cape Town (1942 – 45), then in Eastwood, Pretoria (1945 – 47).

In 1940, the Johannesburg Art Gallery bought one of his artworks – the first image by a Black artist to enter a South African museum collection – and by the mid-1940s, Sekoto had earned a reputation as a significant artist. But his opportunities remained severely limited under apartheid. Seeking a larger and more inclusive art world, he emigrated to France, where he would remain for the rest of life in self-imposed exile.

The SABC Art Collection is proud to be home to Sekoto’s ‘Husband and Wife’, a bold and tender oil painting of a young couple [Slide #4]. In 2023, the artwork had its surface gently cleaned and its shimmering metallic frame repaired as part of a three-year restoration and conservation project.

[Paris images courtesy Karel Nel]

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