Artist Muofhe Manavhela’sTowards the Art: Venda 2026invites South Africa’s art world to leave the gallery and reconnect with the landscapes, artists and cultural histories that shape creative practice For years, South Africa’s contemporary art world has largely moved in one direction. Artists leave the towns and villages that shaped them, hoping to find opportunities in Johannesburg or Cape Town where galleries, collectors and institutions determine much of the country’s artistic economy. It is a journey that has become so familiar that it is rarely questioned.
But artist and founder of The Dealr Muofhe Manavhela believes the time has come to ask a different question: What happens when the movement is reversed? “For the past three years, I’ve been thinking about the movement of art away from the places where its knowledge is formed,” she says. “What travels with the artwork and what remains?” The questions have evolved into Towards the Art: Venda 2026, a five-day programme from 23 to 27 September, which invites artists, curators, writers and cultural travellers to leave the familiar art capitals and spend time in Venda, meeting artists in their environments and engaging with the landscapes and histories that shape their practices.
The programme asks participants to slow down and consider what changes when art is encountered before it reaches a gallery wall. For Manavhela, the idea is personal. Although she was raised in Johannesburg, she was born in Venda and considers it home.
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Through her grandfather she was introduced to celebrated potter Vho Rebecca Matibe, a meeting that would reshape her understanding of what an artistic practice can be. Around 2024 Manavhela returned to Venda with a simple request. “I asked her to teach me,” she says, “I was just a curious artist.”
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