Play Beyond Time- Artist Proof Studio’s Printmakers at ICTAF
At this year’s Investec Cape Town Art Fair (ICTAF), we embrace the theme of Play, exploring how experimentation and collaboration drive artistic growth. Play Beyond Time brings together a dynamic mix of established and emerging artists, each interpreting play through process, storytelling, and material exploration.
Tickets to the fair available here.
Mary Sibande, a collaborating artist, brings a new chapter to her well-known character, Sophie. In Sophie in Her Period of Leisure, Sophie has returned from a decade of self-imposed exile, sending back images of herself enjoying activities that were once out of reach such as playing tennis, sipping tea, and enjoying activities that were once out of reach. These scenes are more than just moments of rest, they challenge the history of exclusion that denied Black people the freedom to simply enjoy leisure. Inspired by On Kawara’s habit of documenting daily life, Sibande uses Sophie’s images to blur the line between personal experience and history. By embracing leisure on her own terms, Sophie reclaims space and choice, turning what was once a restriction into a quiet act of defiance.
Sizwe Khoza, a graduate of Artist Proof Studio, creates portraits that capture fleeting emotions through expressive facial features. His work focuses on the subtle yet powerful ways a single glance can tell a story. Using monotypes, a printmaking technique where each piece is unique, he embraces the unpredictability of both the medium and life itself. The process allows for spontaneity, where each mark and texture become an unrepeatable moment. Through this approach, Khoza highlights the complexity of human expression, inviting viewers to engage with the emotions and narratives embedded in his work.
Bekezela Mabena, an Artist Proof Studio graduate, explores the movement of people and the transformations that come with migration. Drawing from personal experience, history, and contemporary issues, his series Patterns of Migration captures the emotional, psychological, and physical shifts that occur in these journeys. His process is intuitive, allowing themes to emerge through experimentation with materials, techniques, and colour. By embracing unpredictability, he creates abstract works that reflect the fluid and layered nature of migration, giving form to both the seen and unseen aspects of displacement and adaptation.
Working across drawing and mixed media, Kagiso Diale, a collaborating artist, examines the contradictions of modern life in his series Scenes from the Garden. He reflects on the push and pull between Western ideals of success, the realities of social mobility, and the deep ties to family and tradition. His work also expands into a broader exploration of South Africa’s class divisions, questioning how economic status shapes identity and community. His process starts with writing—drafting essays that distill his thoughts before moving into sketches and image references. The final stage, adding intricate details to his drawings, becomes a meditative act where he questions, refines, and deepens the ideas behind each piece. Working primarily with multi-colour etching, he layers textures and tones to create rich, atmospheric compositions. This technique allows him to weave together complex narratives, where figures exist in spaces that feel both familiar and symbolic, capturing the nuances of personal and collective histories.
Lebohang Motaung, an Artist Proof Studio graduate, celebrates hairstyling as both an art form and a storytelling medium. Her work is rooted in personal experience, drawing from years of braiding hair and the conversations shared with friends and clients. Through her practice, she brings the artistry of hairstyling into gallery spaces, highlighting its cultural significance. Her process begins with plaiting real people, capturing their portraits in photographs, and translating these into charcoal drawings. These drawings then evolve into prints, primarily linocuts and watercolor monotypes, often incorporating wool and synthetic hair to add texture and depth. Her bold and expressive hairstyles, ranging from everyday looks to exaggerated designs, challenge conventions and encourage self-expression, inviting viewers to embrace their identity without fear of judgment.
Mosa Kaiser, a collaborating artist at this year’s Cape Town Art Fair, explores ideas of repair and wholeness, building on earlier work that reflected themes of violence and fragmentation. Using mannequins as stand-ins for the human body, she considers what it means to rebuild from broken pieces and what obstacles stand in the way of wholeness. Though she was trained in photography, her practice now includes drawing, painting, and printmaking. She still relies on the camera as a starting point, staging and photographing compositions that she later develops into mixed-media works, each piece carrying the weight of reconstruction and renewal.
Nompumelelo Tshabalala’s work is a deep exploration of identity, memory, and belonging. A graduate of APS, trained in printmaking and fine art, she weaves personal history with broader cultural narratives, using her practice to negotiate her own sense of self. Her work reflects on displacement and healing, often drawing on textiles, objects, and domestic spaces that carry emotional weight. Through this, she examines the tension between familiarity and detachment, questioning what home means and how identity is shaped by both presence and absence. Rooted in introspection, her art invites viewers to reflect on their own connections to memory, culture, and the unseen stories that shape everyday life.
Celebrating 34 Years of Artistic Exploration
The vision of Artist Proof Studio is deeply rooted in a sense of shared humanity, where those with talent and passion can strive for excellence in artmaking, achieving both creative fulfilment and self-sustainability. As we engage with the 2025 Investec Cape Town Art Fair's theme of "Play," we reflect on a 34-year legacy steeped in creative exploration and uninhibited expression.
