Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) has announced its upcoming 2026–2027 exhibition season featuring IMPRINT, an artist-led studio residency convening Cape Town publishing collectives; and Turning Towards the Sun, a multimedia exhibition featuring newly commissioned films by Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, Mati Diop, Jim Chuchu, Wanuri Kahiu, and The Otolith Group, developed through the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC) led by Julie Mehretu and Mehret Mandefro.
Together, they foreground experimentation and critical discourse that promote new forms of public engagement across Africa and its diaspora.
IMPRINT, co-curated by Nathalie Viruly, and Dr Greer Valley, and supported by Bulelwa Kunene, Angela Muritu and Emme Pretorius, will be on view from 1 October 2026 to 28 March 2028 on Level 2 Elevator Side. The project is an artist-led studio residency that hosts Cape Town publishing collectives in Zeitz MOCAA’s Koyo Kouoh Atelier.
The residency positions publishing not as a supplementary outcome of artistic practice, but as its central condition and method. Convening the collectives (B)and Wi(d)th, Medupi Publishing, and Creative Knowledge Resources, the Atelier unfolds a series of working spaces where research, production, and circulation are made tangible, expanding publishing beyond the book to include sound, performance, ephemera, and transmission.
Zeitz MOCAA residencies
The residencies, lasting between three to six months, are extended through an extensive and experimental public programme developed in collaboration with the 2026 University of Western Cape and Zeitz MOCAA Fellows Drawing on these propositions and histories of self-publishing as tools for organising, dissent, and the shaping of subcultures, the Atelier therefore becomes a site of continuous addition and revision, where ideas remain in flux and permeable to its readership. Visitors encounter publishing as a medium that insists on its publicness, embraces contingency, and foregrounds the social and political forms found within. This exhibition is supported by the Mellon Foundation.
Turning Towards the Sun, curated by Khanyi Mawhayi supported by Dr Phokeng Setai and Dr Greer Valley and assisted by Angela Muritu, Inshaaf Jamodien and Evyn Banawoye, will be on view from 10 December 2026 to 15 August 2027 on Level 4. This multimedia exhibition presents film and media arts from Africa and its diaspora and is inspired by the ideals of Pan-African solidarities.
It brings together five artists and filmmakers to explore moving image-making and collective practice on the continent and what Koyo Kouoh called the wider Black geographies of the 21st century. Brought together through the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC) and led by Julie Mehretu and Mehret Mandefro, the exhibition presents five commissioned films by Ethiopian director Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop, Kenyan multidisciplinary artist Jim Chuchu, Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, and The Otolith Group, an interdisciplinary artist collective based in London. This exhibition is presented in collaboration with the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC) and BMW.
Memory into movement
Dr Greer Valley, Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs, remarks: “During our 2026 exhibition season, we have chosen to gather with artists—artists who transform memory into movement, language into commons, and images into forms of agency. The residency and exhibition position the Museum as a place of listening and becoming, where histories are reanimated, and futures rehearsed into being through acts of sequence and serendipity. Here, the smallest gestures carry weight, knowledge remains elastic, and time becomes visceral.”
In a nutshell
Zeitz MOCAA exhibition season 2026–2027
Silo District, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town
Call 087 350 4777
www.zeitzmocaa.museum