Each year, we ask our contributors to share their highlights—here’s what caught their eye in 2025:

Ashraf Jamal

Favourite group show of the year: ‘STRUCTURES’, Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation. This show reimagined physical space, asked us to understand physical and psychic implication in a destroyed yet beautiful world.

Favourite solo show of the year: ‘Group Show’ by Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Southern Guild, Cape Town, the most intelligent grasp of abstraction, most felt space, superb design and articulation. Southern Guild is by far the most significant global dealership in South Africa right now.

Favourite artist of the year: Elize Vossgatter’s shows,  ‘Gutter Pop’ at Michaelis and more importantly her minor show, ‘Systemic’, at Nirox, in which contamination runs deep, besides, sickness and health are one in a society defined by damage – so every messed fucked destroyed work, that wills a saving future, deserves this prize.

Favourite artwork of the year: It was a disassembled reassembled ‘Tree’ by Diana Vives and Douglas Gimberg at Nirox. Why? Because deconstruction remains potent and certainty a grotesque folly, because the organic and its denature is inescapable. The ‘tree’ lunged across the floor, its broken parts pathos, hopelessness and infinite yearning were one.

Favourite space: a leather chair in a secluded space of a bookshop – Hyde Park Exclusive Books, Johannesburg.

Favourite publication: ‘Art and The Devil’ by Reshada Crouse, the most honest account by an artist, since Rian Malan’s ‘My Traitor’s Heart’ – fresh, clear, true and immortal – a cult classic. Important to note the rarity of a painter-writer.

Quote of the year: Georgia O’Keeffe, first great American abstract painter, long before the Ab Ex onanists. O’Keeffe said — “Making your unknown known is the most important thing, and keeping the unknown always beyond you.”

What I’d love to see in 2026: Great cheer. 

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: Less miserabilism.

Nkgopoleng Moloi

Favourite group show of the year:  I really loved ‘Histoires la Familia’ at Hakanto Contemporary in their new outpost in Antananarivo, which I visited earlier this year. The show brought together a group of Malagasy artists and the global north around themes of grief, home and the mother. 

I enjoyed the sense of scale and multiple contradictions within the show, and that in stark contrast to the spirit of the actual streets of the city of Antananarivo, which made me think a lot about exhibition making, audiences and the politics of display. 

Favourite solo show of the year:  Because I’m so predictable in my love for clean lines and a kind of structure, I enjoyed  ‘When no one else comes, you can summon spirits to keep you company’, a solo exhibition by Zoë Paul at blank. 

The show was a wonderful exploration of form through material; there was a poetry in how the works took on the shape of Arthropods, and the use of colour was affecting, which makes me think of a close second to this show – Oupa Sibeko’s ‘Theme Park’ at Lemkus Gallery. Oupa says play is performance is prayer is life. Come to think of it, there is a weird connection regarding spirits and the ghostly in both shows. 

Favourite artist of the year:  Thato Toeba. I had the pleasure of interviewing Thato, who completely nerded out on their recent show, ‘sehlahla se tukang empa se sa che’, at Stevenson. During that conversation, I had many moments where I felt genuinely excited, impressed, and moved by the connections they were making between image-making, language, law, personhood, and tradition. Thato is so smart. I got the sense that they want to break things but not simply for the sake of destruction and wreckage – I guess that’s what collage is, cutting up in order to piece together. Assemblage as method and a political posture. 

Favourite artwork of the year: Mindy Seu’s ‘A sexual history of the Internet’, a project in two parts that reveals the pervasive and perverted origins of our digital tools –  which I wrote about here. Mindy’s great. She told me that as part of this project, she’s experimenting with a new form where the power of cocitation (long seen as a powerful feminist modality) can be directly linked to financial benefits by compensating each person cited in the project each time someone buys the book. That might be the coolest thing I heard all year.  

Favourite space: Chimurenga. Recently, I went to a screening of Cauleen Smith’s film ‘Drylongso’. The screening was organised by Zeitz Mocaa as part of a program to welcome Smith’s show at the museum. I was reminded of how Chimurenga is the closest thing to a pan-African home in Cape Town. You can see art there…you can read, eat, dance, debate, hang out. If that is not transdisciplinary, I don’t know what is. 

Favourite publication: ArtThrob, ofcourse. A lot of the time, I’m reading Hauser & Wirth’s Ursula Magazine (mostly online) – Rashid Johnson’s intergenerational conversation with his father and his son was fantastic. On my reading table is also a rotation of  The Gentlewoman (I read fantastic interviews with Lorna Simpson and Joanna Hogg) and Kinfolk. I guess I’m really enjoying long-form interviews this year. 

Quote of the year: “Transcending the present sounds like negligence, but confessing belief is cringe.” – Travis Diehl. 

Then again, one man’s cringe is another man’s sincerity and vice versa.

What I’d love to see in 2026: Thoughtfulness. I didn’t have the opportunity to see Tumelo Mtimkhulu’s ‘I, one drop plus one drop’ makes a bigger drop, not two,’ at Stevenson in Amsterdam, but reading his texts on the work, I was struck by how thoughtful he is in his practice. Another great thinker. There is a sense of being curious – meticulously and honestly following those curiosities. I felt it when he wrote: “Aperture (a poem in twelve parts) is alive with entanglements. In it I move from writing in response to the countenance of my mother as she ages, the intimacy of a home, being away and having to rely on language to bridge the distance, to reckoning with the failures of language. In between, I sit with the uneasiness of the wrinkles in the purported neutrality by former Empires.”

What I’d love to see retired in 2026:  The confessional impulse and an intense soppy focus on “me, me, me”. The world is so vast. Talk to me about black holes, galaxies and the end of time. 

Nkhensani Mkhari

Favourite group show of the year: ‘Group Show’ by Kamyar Bineshtarigh at Southern Guild, Cape Town.

Favourite solo show of the year: ‘Group Show’ by Kamyar Bineshtarigh at Southern Guild Cape Town (yes, you read that right).

Favourite artist of the year: Asemahle Ntlonti.

Favourite artwork of the year: Oupa Sibeko’s performance, and those keen shafts of memory that stung felt like fire.

Favourite space: Stevenson, Johannesburg (naturally).

Favourite publication: My Substack (shameless, but earned).

Quote of the year: ‘Are we ‘wild,’ we black and queer ones, in the way the terrifying terraforming of white supremacy determines it to be? Not in that way, but perhaps in another way, a wildness to come.’ —Tavia Nyong’o [Listening for Utopia, 2025]

What I’d love to see in 2026: A Biennale, more project spaces, more independent artists, more new-media art, more performance art, more abstraction, more art criticism (is that too much to ask?)

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: Aesthetic acculturation and artists and galleries going broke (preferably yesterday).

David Mann

Favourite group show of the year: Kamyar Bineshtarigh’s ‘Group Show’, which was a solo, I know, but I loved it for its ability to speak to a variety of artistic practices and processes across the country, and its way of using a solo invitation to think more collaboratively.  

Favourite solo show of the year: Bella Knemeyer’s ‘here, there, and everywhere’ at Reservoir, which was a quietly reflective moment during the frenzy of Cape Town Art Fair.

Favourite artist of the year: Penny Siopis. She was at The Centre for the Less Good Idea a lot this year, and seeing her continue to experiment with process and form in the ways that she does was deeply inspirational.

Favourite artwork of the year: Smiso Cele’s spade sculptures. The idea of art or writing as a process of excavation has been on my mind this year, and Cele’s manipulation of the spade is such a brilliant metaphor for this. Seamus Heaney’s ‘Digging’ comes to mind — “Between my finger and my thumb, the squat pen rests, I’ll dig with it.”  

Favourite space: Keyes Art Mile. It became a home for Writers’ Block, and a space of rich discussion, workshopping, and experimentation around contemporary art criticism.  

Favourite publication: Nicola Brandt’s ‘The Distance Within’. Beautifully designed, edited with care, and full of great art and writing.

Quote of the year: I’ve used this quote in far too many talks and reviews this year, but I may as well deploy it one more time: “The world does not deliver meaning to you. You need to make it meaningful … and decide what you want, need and must do. It’s a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that’s the deal: you have to live; you can’t live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés or national flags.” — Zadie Smith

What I’d love to see in 2026: More experimental criticism, more platforms for writers and artists, more publications like ArtThrob.  

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: Johannesburg galleries presenting group shows that are plainly commercial and deeply unimaginative. 

Ben Albertyn 

Favourite group show of the year: ‘Group Show’ by Kamyar Bineshtarigh. Bit of a cheat maybe, but what’s so remarkable about this exhibition is precisely the way it dissociates the opposition between group and solo show. The austere architectural palimpsests that Kamyar has been preoccupied with over the last few years take on a different, more convivial character in ‘Group Show’. Without losing the peculiarities that define his practice, ‘Group Show’ concedes to a larger group. The content of the work does not belong to the artist, though each piece is shaped and presented in a way that still feels unmistakably Kamyar.

Favourite solo show of the year: ‘58 Barnet Street’ by Jared Ginsburg. Head and shoulders above the rest for me.

Favourite artist of the year: Yolanda Li. Her exhibition at Lemkus, ‘Turning and Turning’,  was the most exciting new video show I’ve seen in Cape Town in ages, maybe ever. Granted the bar is in hell, but Yolanda has an incredible, intuitive way of dealing with surface and depth, which allows her to explore the proportions of digital video, both physically and conceptually, in a way that feels pretty rare. 

Favourite artwork of the year: ‘See You in Happiness’ by James Webb. One. Perfect. Nail.

Favourite space: The unholy alliance known as Girls Gallery has annexed the old Catholic Bookshop there by Evol recently. Nice to have at least one completely depraved art institution in town.

Favourite publication: Gnossienne. Two issues deep, and Gnossienne already feels irreplaceable. Jess Sutherland is a huge W for the literary fraternity. 

Quote of the year: “A horse is not a horse” – Jean Luc-Godard’s last words in his final film Scénarios (2025), completed the day before his assisted suicide in 2022. Given one last chance to say something, Mr Godard got right down to brass tacks.

What I’d love to see in 2026: Láura Viruly’s recent MFA grad show at Michaelis got me excited about big sculptures again, so more of that or maybe just more Láura Viruly.

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: Waiting around for a gallery to show your work. It’s more fun to do independent shows.

Keely Shinners

Favourite group show of the year: I’m going to go ahead and say ‘Group Show’ by Kamyar Bineshtarigh at Southern Guild, even though—or precisely because—it confused the usual categories of authorship, honouring the collective world that lends language to an individual voice. 

Favourite solo show of the year: Recency bias notwithstanding, Steven Cohen’s ‘Long Life’ at Iziko South African National Gallery was pretty spectacular: wild, untamed, excessive, problem-riddled—a retrospective of fearsome beauty. 

Favourite artist of the year: It’s a tie between Emma Belsham and Shayna Arvan, whose duo show ‘On the tip of the tongue’ was not only a keen display of their prowess as painters, but an inspiring act of independent exhibition making: throw a party, find a space, voilà! Sometimes a little hustle is all it takes. 

Favourite artwork of the year: Wendy Fredriksson’s ‘Cold Comfort’ at breakroom impressed me immensely. The austere and yet undeniably funny image of a cream-colored, ruby-eyed mechanical bull has lived in my mind all year. I’m excited to see what she does next.

Favourite space: ‘Afterimage’ by Mitchell Messina and Ben Albertyn made clever use of the Labia as a space where experimental short films, normally so cumbersome to encounter in a gallery, could be watched in a communal setting. Each video artist was invited to screen a selection of references, which introduced me to some strange and delightful stuff I’d have never encountered before. 

Favourite publication: Gnossienne! Jess Sutherland’s new publishing venture, which has released two anthologies so far, contains contributions of art and literature from some of my favourites and, moreover, is one of the most stylishly designed I’ve seen in a while. 

Quote of the year: “Night blooming jasmine.” The epitaph on David Lynch’s gravestone. 

What I’d love to see in 2026: Leaps of faith. 

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: Self-punishment. 

Zada Hanmer 

Favourite group show of the year: ‘Force Majeure’ at Vela Projects.

Favourite solo show of the year: ‘Waar Bloed Nie Loop Nie’ by Mellaney Roberts at Candice Berman Johannesburg.

Favourite artist of the year: Lindokuhle Sobekwa and Nolan Oswald Dennis.

Favourite artwork of the year: Mellaney Roberts’ ‘The Ancestor’

Favourite space: The Centre for the Less Good Idea in Joburg.

Favourite publication: The JCAF Journal.

Quote of the year: “By some logic, then, the permacrisis becomes its own form of stability – a hypermodern diagnosis of the everyday – a chain of overlapping crises without resolution, defined by endurance, suffering, and spectacle.” – ‘Force Majeure’ exhibition catalogue. 

What I’d love to see in 2026: More experimentation with voice, authorship, technology, and their impact on the psyche. 

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: Hyperrealism. 

Tiyani Rikhotso

Favourite group show of the year: The Royal Danish Academy’s MFA Degree Show 2025 at the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. The show was a refreshing mix of mediums and subject matter that displayed the passion, candour and boldness that always moves me in graduate shows.

Favourite solo show of the year: Anna Oosting’s ‘Breaking Waves’ at the Museum Beelden aan Zee in The Hague. Oosting’s installation was a mesmerising meeting of science and art. The life breathed into the show’s floating sea creatures, through just a single fold, is a testament to the beauty in simplicity and has forever changed the way I see paper.

Favourite artist of the year: Kay-Leigh Fisher. I fell in love with Fisher’s work ‘Looking is Free’ (2025) at the FNB Joburg Art Fair and continue to revisit and marvel over the magic of her dancing figures and ethereal brushstrokes.

Favourite artwork of the year: Karin Daymond’s ‘Push and Pull’ (2018). Bumping into the White River Gallery and Daymond’s solo show, Source, was such a nice surprise on a recent trip to Mpumalanga. I have been thinking of the eerie landscape and Daymond’s sensitivity to light in the painting since.

Favourite space: The Library at Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography in Amsterdam. 

Favourite publication: ArtThrob (particularly the texts in the features section and publishing of more news items in 2025) and Arts of the Working Class.

Quote of the year: “You’ll keep writing if it’s worth it to you—worth the dread, the headache, the fear, the exposure, the embarrassment.” – Haley Nahman

What I’d love to see in 2026: More art writing workshops.

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: QR code/no artwork labels. Bring text-based captions and artist statements back!

Emily Freedman 

Favourite group show of the year: ‘Group Show From Hell’ by Girls Gallery.

Favourite solo show of the year: ‘Turning and Turning’ by Yolanda Li.

Favourite artist of the year: Lindokuhle Sobekwa.

Favourite artwork of the year: Phomolo Sello by Thero Makepe.

Favourite space: Lemkus Gallery.

Favourite publication: Democracy Now!. Western media’s ongoing distortion of news related to Palestine works as proof of how ideology seeps into every aspect of writing, from diction to narrative, to enact deep violence. I’m glad some platforms like Democracy Now! are filling a huge gap.

Quote of the year: What can the line do that the sentence cannot…I turn to poetry because it asked more of me…we wanted novels to be lucid and the sentence to be inconspicuous, to just serve the story… I just thought ‘why is that’, shouldn’t the sentence look more like van Gogh’s brushwork? Shouldn’t it be lifted away and have a kind of, the indelible mark of historic personhood in it?…in the 20th century prose has been asked to be mimetic, it should merely represent life…and poetry should be more, what Heidegger calls, the threshold moment, poesis rather than mimesis. Poesis is when, it’s the before the rose becomes a rose… the threshold moment, the liminal moment that leads up to rose-ness, what is that? And I think poetry is deeply interested in that procedural process as the event itself, it centres the procedure. Ocean Vuong (Interview: Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud, 2025).

What I’d love to see in 2026: I’d love to see those little labels, next to the artwork, with its name. I love a well-designed catalogue, and these would just be the cherry on top. To engage an exhibition on your own terms is only enhanced when you know what the exhibition’s terms are, I think.

What I’d love to see retired in 2026: Male-dominated events/spaces.