The Centre for Humanities Research
08.08 - 20.10.2025

A new exhibition at The Centre for Humanities Research (University of the Western Cape), ‘And I, a newly evolved fish’ showcases artworks by South African artists that engage with oceans, bodies of water and beaches to challenge gender binaries and their intersections with coloniality, patriarchy, global capitalism and the Anthropocene.

Curated by Rory Kahiya Tsapayi with Lwando Scott and Tamara Shefer, the exhibition brings together contemporary artworks as well as those in archives that think with water towards disrupting the entangled binaries of race, gender, sexuality and human-nature within the historical and continued dominance of colonial, capitalist and anthropocentric logics. It considers bodies of water, particularly oceans, as sites, subjects, and frameworks through which to imagine gender, sexuality, and power otherwise and within broader social and environmental justice goals. Such work further addresses the erasures of raced, gendered and other marginal bodies, knowledges, and histories both within dominant art and public representations, and in the public imaginary.

Featured artists include: Jody Brand, Peter Clarke, Cheri Hugo, Bronwyn Katz, Kewpie, Neo Matloga, Sabelo Mlangeni, Daniel Kgomo Morolong, Mikhailia Petersen, Berni Searle, Zenaéca Singh, Chris Soal, Shakil Solanki, and Andrew Verster.