Future Worldings

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Xwalacktun, “Relief,” 2024

Installation view at The Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture at NIROX Sculpture Park in Krugersdorp, South Africa. (Photos by Ntate Phakela) (courtesy of the Gallery)

This group exhibition features six artists from South Africa and Canada, collectively asking how it may be possible to “world” together, while maintaining local contexts of site, history, and cultural understanding.

Future Worldings is a culmination of a project that first began in 2021 with a two-month digital residency involving artists Wezile Harmans, Lebogang Mogul Mabusela, and Pebofatso Mokoena of South Africa, and Nura Ali, Sun Forest, and Xwalacktun of Canada. Together, the artists developed a three-part exchange to share discourse and decolonial practices, inspired by cultural movements like Black Lives Matter and the parallel histories of both countries’ Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

This past spring, Xwalacktun continued the exchange with local South African artists, via a residency at NIROX Sculpture Park in Johannesburg that culminated in a group show named Relief, featuring his work and that of other master carvers from the Limpopo region. Later this month, all six artists will meet at the Similkameen Artist Residency, where they will continue developing their practices in relation to the Okanagan’s local artists and cultural practitioners. Finally the artists will spend September at Griffin creating new work, while connecting with Vancouver’s local histories and practices through interactions with curators and cultural organizations, like Emily Carr University and the Museum of Anthropology.

The Future Worldings exhibition features all new and recent work by these six artists, and marks the South African artists’ debut in Canada. These works range across diverse mediums like sculpture to video, performance to print-making. Also on view will be two of Xwalacktun’s prints from the NIROX residency, and documentary photos and videos of his time there.