Warren Maroon was awarded the Investec Emerging Artist Award 2026, which recognises exceptional South African artists who have not yet exhibited a solo in a museum or on an international platform. 

In Maroon’s work, ideas assume a physical form that feels resolved and resolute. Often made from salvaged material, his sculptures are visual representations of his lived experience. Whether it is paper roses, knives, found branches, rope, matchsticks, barbed wire, lace or neon lights, each element is placed so perfectly it feels as though it has lived its entire life waiting for that moment – to be metabolised into Maroon’s vision. 

It is interesting that Maroon’s work (his fragile forms) confronts, so directly, some of the harshest realities of life – violence, dispossesion, injustice, inequality. He does so with a language that is clean, clear-cut and sharp. Even so, his sense of clarity refuses to fall into the trap of false promises of purity, empty hope or transcendence. Maroon seems to be doing what Walter Benjamin promised,  that is to say, he uses art to “teach us how to survive civilisation if need be,” where civilisation is measured in progress, plunder, extraction, dispossession….the very things that his practice is endlessly concerned with. 

Benjamin also asked, “Who still meets people who really know how to tell a story?” – We do, in the incredible work of Warren Maroon. 

Warren Maroon, Rising Sun, 2025. Glass, Matchsticks and balsa wood. Photographer Slater Studio