We are pleased to announce our participation in the main section at Investec Cape Town Art Fair. The fair will run from 19 February - 23 February 2026. We will present an extensive group presentation with works by Taqwa Ali, Yonela Doda, M. Florine Démosthène, Dana James, Ana Sant'Anna, Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, Chris Watts, Zilien and Mhlonishwa Zulu. You can visit us at booth C2.
Tawa Ali, b. 1997 in Sudan, lives and works in the Netherlands
Her work involves painting, sculpture, and performative interventions, frequently exploring themes of translocation, integration, memory, and reconnection through the symbolism of various materials Ali’s artistic practice is defined by her interest in organic materials and their ability to evoke sensory and cultural memory, especially in the context of diasporic experiences. She employs materials like Hibiscus, soil, clay, Arabic gum, and dust to merge personal, political, and collective narratives. Her work investigates how displaced bodies and objects reverberate in new spaces, aiming to stitch gaps caused by migration and resettlement.
Yonela Doda, b. 1998 in Western Cape, ZA, lives and works in Cape Town, ZA
Doda is a based multimedia artist specialising in collage and mainly draws inspiration from the Catharsis Theory, which was first used in a psychological context by Josef Breuer. By experimenting with collage and thread in her engagement with human pathology, Doda communicates processes of purging and cleansing in line with notions of catharsis. She confronts how and why the body comes to matter, its materiality and function, as well as the fraught entanglements of race, gender, and medical science. Accordingly, it could be said that Doda’s work falls within the representational domain of ‘abject art’, as theorised by Julia Kristeva. Looking closely at dermatological afflictions, Doda’s work conveys the vulnerability of an open wound. Her collages counterpose beauty and abomination, sickness and health, in the unseen struggles of recovery and self-acceptance.
M. Florine Démosthène, b. 1971 in US.
M. Florine Démosthène was raised between Port-au-Prince, Haiti and New York. Her works portray otherworldly dystopian characteristics through multi-media and collage. The combination of her figures considers the Black female body as a myriad of collective experiences beyond immediate interpretations based on sensuality. Démosthène’s work envelops flesh and form amongst evanescent backdrops and the use of mylar enhances the lack of permanence in the background, suggesting the figures are translucent and floating. The artist lures you into a phantasmagoric sphere with her sparkly surfaces and her amphibious marble-like figures often adorned with aquatic accents. Between reverie and reality, dream and nightmare, possibility, and actuality, plunging the viewer into her intertwined almost science-fiction dimension.
Dana James, b. 1986 in New York, NY, US, lives and works in Brooklyn, New York
Dana James is an American artist who primarily works in painting. In her practice, James playfully challenges viewers' notions of line and shape by contrasting materials and processes next to one another. She creates a spectrum of pastel-toned colours which she applies to create notes of contradiction in darker, vivid fields of color in fractured multi-panel constructions. Creating multi-dimensional layers, throwing pigments, mark-making, and drawing, her work oscillates between energetic impulsive strokes, which can be at once dark but then combines matt-colored surfaces with a determination of drawing in straight lines and forms.
Ana Sant'Anna, b, 1992 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, lives and works in Salvador
Ana Sant'Anna works across multiple media. The artist develops a practice that seeks to make visible what is subtle: luminosity, transience, and the experience of non-chronological time. Her work emerges from displacement and attentive listening to the places she inhabits and traverses, fueling a continuous investigation in which enchantment and sensitive perception are transformed into material for creation. Between simplicity and complexity, her research highlights the power of natural phenomena, opening itself to what continues vibrating in silence. Her practice unfolds as a cartography of impermanence, where each work holds the vibration of the instant and invites the gaze to inhabit the interval between dissolution and permanence.
Cinthia Sifa Mulanga, b. 1997 in Lubumbashi, CD, lives and works in Johannesburg, ZA
Cinthia Sifa Mulanga is an independent contemporary artist from the Democratic Republic of the Congo whose practice is deeply rooted in her experiences growing up in South Africa. After her studies, Mulanga became preoccupied with painting and collage, mediums that have come to define her practice. They serve a dual interest in engaging with the history of western art and popular culture thus delving into African art. The focus of Mulanga’s practice is on the representation of Black women. Through their depiction, she looks to engage with different personas, emotions, or states of mind. Mulanga trained as an artist at the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg.
Chris Watts, b.1984, High Point, North Carolina, US.
Chris Watts is an interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to revise, interrogate, and re-examine social and personal narratives through the transfiguration of painting and installation. Currently, these projects exist as representations of windows as switches into another layered assemblage of spaces that act as guides in the exploration of sacred meditative spaces and encounters with the immaterial. He attended the MFA program at Yale School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut, after graduating from the College of Arts and Architecture, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design, Wroclaw, Poland. He participated in the Art & Law Fellowship Program, at Cornell University Art Architecture Planning, New York; and is a 22-23 Soros Justice Fellow. Watts has held various artist residencies, among them the Marek Maria Pienkowski Foundation, Chelm, Poland; McColl Center for Art + Innovation, Charlotte, North Carolina; and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Program, New York. Watts now lives and works between New York City and North Carolina.
Zilien (b.1995) is a Mauritian multidisciplinary artist whose pratice centers on painting as a bridge between dream and reality. His work explores memory, dream fragmentation, and life experiences. Zilien's work engages with the universal language and symbolism of man-made objects. He transforms and shapes everyday materials to convey narratives. Influenced by psycoanalysis research and Surrealism concept, he believes there is inherent poetry in the way humans interact with physical materials. Each painting represents a question, a dream, juxtaposing his inner life with an open space to play with textures, volumes, and forms. For him, creating is an act of preservation, a means of documenting fleeting ideas and visions drawn from memory and dreams. Educated at the School of FineArts of Mahatma Gandhi Institute (2017-21, Mauritius). He was then laureate to pursuit his Master at École Supérieure d’Art et de Design Mer Méditerranée (2021-23, Marseille) where he pursued his studies further and allowed his voice as an artist to mature and deepen.
Mhlonishwa Zulu, b. 2002 in South Africa, lives and works in Cape Town, ZA
Mhlonishwa Zulu’s artistic practice is deeply rooted in storytelling and symbolism, shaped by reflections on human experience and personal observation. Inspired by vivid stories from his childhood, shared within his family, he embraces narrative as a powerful and transformative force. His work navigates the boundaries between fantasy, spirituality, and everyday life, presenting reimagined environments and objects through a surreal lens. A key aspect of Zulu’s methodology is collaboration through dialogue, using conversation as a means to bring together different viewpoints and generate layered meanings. By blending the familiar with the unexpected, he creates immersive, in-between spaces that encourage viewers to contemplate both their inner worlds and the realities around them.
