Gaborone is the capital and largest city of Botswana with a population of 246,325 based on the 2022 census, about 10% of the total population of Botswana. Its agglomeration is home to 421,907 inhabitants at the 2011 census.
The Triangle Network, formally known as the Triangle Arts Trust, is an international arts organisation that brings together artists from different countries to explore new ideas and expand the boundaries of their practice.
Hermann Niebuhr is a South African artist who lives in De Rust. He utilizes oils on canvas in a classical painterly style to document urban decay as well as rural landscapes.
Peter Clarke was a South African visual artist working across a broad spectrum of media. He was also a writer and poet.
David Nthubu Koloane was a South African artist. In his drawings, paintings and collages he explored questions about political injustice and human rights. Koloane is considered to have been "an influential artist and writer of the apartheid years" in South Africa.
Mbongeni Buthelezi, born 1966 in Johannesburg in South Africa, is an artist who became known for "painting" in plastic.
Robert Beauclerk Loder, was an English businessman and art collector. He was particularly concerned in developing contemporary African art.
Kathryn Smith is a South African artist, curator, and researcher. She works on curatorial projects, scholarly research, and studio practices, while her art deals with uncertainty, risk, and experimentation. She works in Cape Town and Stellenbosch. Her works have been exhibited and collected in South Africa and elsewhere. In 2006, she was appointed senior lecturer in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Stellenbosch and head of the Fine Arts Studio Practice program. She took a break in 2012/2013 to read for an MSc at the University of Dundee.
Johan Thom, is a visual artist who works across video, installation, performance and sculpture. He has been described as one of South Africa's foremost performance artists.
Nontsikelelo "Lolo" Veleko is a South African photographer most noted for her depiction of black identity, urbanisation and fashion in post-apartheid South Africa.
Mary Sibande is a South African artist based in Johannesburg. Her art consists of sculptures, paintings, photography, and design. Sibande uses these mediums and techniques to help depict the human form and explore the construction of identity in a postcolonial South African context. In addition, Sibande focuses on using her work to show her personal experiences through Apartheid. Her art also attempts to critique stereotypical depictions of women, particularly black women.
Deborah Bell is a South African painter and sculptor whose works are known internationally.
Zwelidumile Geelboi Mgxaji Mhlaba "Dumile" Feni was a South African contemporary visual artist known for Katlego Lhuzwayoboth his drawings and paintings that included sculptural elements as well as sculptures, which often depicted the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. Feni lived in exile and extreme poverty for most of his art career.
Wayne Barker, South African visual artist. Barker is based in Johannesburg. He rose to prominence in the late 80s, at the height of political unrest under the Apartheid regime. His work has featured in several global biennales, art fairs and important retrospective exhibitions. He works in various mediums, including but not limited to painting, printmaking, sculpture, video, performance and installation. In addition to collaborations with other artists, Barker has collaborated with the Qubeka Beadwork Studio based in Cape Town, to realise large scale glass beadworks.
Jeannette Unite is a South African artist who has collected oxides, metal salts and residues from mines, heritage and industrial sites to develop paint, pastel and glass recipes for her large scale artworks that reflect on the mining and industrial sites where humanity's contemporary world is manufactured.
CoexʼaeQgam, who worked under the name Dada (1934–2008) was a Botswana artist, storyteller, and translator. A Bushman, she was a member of the Ncoakhoe people, speakers of the Naro language.
Mmakgabo Mmapula Mmangankato Helen Sebidi is a South African artist born in Marapyane (Skilpadfontein) near Hamanskraal, Pretoria who lives and works in Johannesburg. Sebidi's work has been represented in private and public collections, including at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington and New York the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, New York, and the World Bank. Her work has been recognised internationally and locally. In 1989 she won the Standard Bank Young Artist award, becoming the first black woman to win the award. In 2004, President Thabo Mbeki awarded her the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver – which is the highest honor given to those considered a "national treasure". In 2011, she was awarded the Arts and Culture Trust (ACT) Lifetime Achievement Award for Visual Art, whilst in 2015 she received the Mbokodo Award. In September 2018, Sebidi was honoured with one of the first solo presentations at the Norval Foundation in Cape Town – a retrospective entitled Batlhaping Ba Re.
Medu Art Ensemble was a collective of cultural activists based in Gaborone, Botswana during the height of the anti-apartheid resistance movement during the late twentieth century. The collective formed originally in 1977 as a group of black South African artists mutually invested in regional liberation struggles and resistance to South Africa’s apartheid policy of racial segregation (1948-1994). Medu’s members, or “cultural workers” as they preferred to be called, eventually organized and relocated to Gaborone, Botswana in 1978. They felt that the term "cultural workers" was far more fitting to their mission rather than referring to themselves as artists because the such a pursuit was regarded as something trivial and therefore inherently elitist and white. With the support of the African National Congress (ANC), in Gaborone Medu officially registered as a cultural organization with the Botswanan government. Medu means “roots” in the Northern Sotho language, and so describes the collective's underground operations. The collective’s cultural work was rhizomatic in nature, stretching across seven semi-autonomous units: Film, Graphics, Music, Photography, Poetry, Publishing and Research, and Theatre.
Mpapa Gallery was the first independent art gallery in Zambia, existing in Lusaka from 1978 until 1996.
Lefifi Tladi is a South African painter, poet, sculptor and musician. As a member of the black consciousness movement he was exiled from South Africa in 1976. He lived in exile, primarily in Stockholm, Sweden, until the abolition of apartheid, and in 1997 returned to South Africa for the first time in over 20 years. In 2021 he was awarded the lifetime achievement award by the South African Literary Awards.
