Solstice: I + II : THK Cape Town

Alexia Smit (b. 1983, Durban, South Africa) is a painter and scholar who lives and works in Cape Town. Smit is a self-taught painter whose practice emerges from a long engagement with cinematic and media cultures. Trained formally in film theory - with a PhD in Film and Television Studies from the University of Glasgow - her turn to painting in her thirties opened a tactile, affective route into questions she had long explored intellectually: the visual construction of femininity, the spectacle of the female body, and the emotional charge of mediated images.

Tshepiso Moropa (b. 1995) is a self-taught collage artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. With an academic background in Psychology, Linguistics, and Research, her artistic practice engages deeply with African historical archives, particularly those reflecting Black life and womanhood. Moropa’s work begins in fragments: archival images, memories, folktales, and dreams, which she assembles into hand-crafted collages that feel at once ancient and futuristic, personal and collective. Working across both digital and analogue forms, she constructs visual narratives that reimagine the archive not as a fixed record but as a living and evolving space of possibility. Rooted in the oral traditions of her childhood, her compositions carry the emotional weight of stories passed down through generations, using symbolism, repetition, and abstraction to explore ancestral knowledge, inherited memory, and the dreamlike spaces where these ideas converge.

Emily Rae Labuschagne (b. 1994) is a multi-disciplinary artist and part-time lecturer based in Cape Town, South Africa. She completed her Master of Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and currently works from her home studio in Rooi Els. Her practice spans painting, text, object, and colour, engaging with themes of narrative, memory, and the imaginary. After completing her MFA, Emily paused her art practice to focus on teaching at the University of Cape Town.

Sahlah Davids (b. 1998) is a Cape Town-based visual artist whose practice centers on textiles and beadwork. In her studio practice, Sahlah Davids uses a material language of textiles, upholstery, and needleworking to explore the oral histories of her heritage and strong affiliation to the realm of religiopolitics. Cape Town born and raised, Davids has described her methods of creation as the product of the blended learning and trades of the Cape Muslim community, specifically the elders within her family.

Abdus Salaam (b. 1989) is a visual artist who lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Salaam is a self-taught multi-disciplinary artist inspired by natural beauty, ecology and spirituality. Salaam reveals a sensitivity to three-dimensional spatial expression and the metaphysical connotations inherent in nature, materials, forms and colours. Contemporary in his mystic abstraction, his work is rooted in poetry, calling from a familiar place to a state of peaceful and intensive longing. Through his use of materials, he explores the immaterial, always working alone to infuse his pieces with deep intention. Moving freely between mediums – from sculpture to painting, video, photographic ‘light paintings’, poetry, augmented reality, and music – he creates poetic worlds, from the intimate to large-scale installation.

Driaan Claassen (b. 1991) in Johannesburg, South Africa is renowned for his deep exploration of the human psyche through intricate and thought-provoking sculptures. His artistic journey began with a fascination for 3D animation, which eventually led to an apprenticeship with the esteemed artist Otto du Plessis at the Bronze Age Foundry. This experience profoundly shaped Claassen’s unique approach, blending traditional craftsmanship with modern technology to create works that are both intellectually engaging and visually compelling. His work reflects a deep fascination with themes of consciousness, order, and chaos, often employing a meticulous combination of ancient techniques and cutting-edge technology. Through this approach, he challenges viewers to contemplate the  interplay between the material world and the inner workings of the mind.

Duncan Wylie (b. 1975) is a visual artist living and working between London and Paris. Internationally renowned for his layered expressionist brushwork and mastery of the medium, Wylie creates multi-dimensional paintings that capture a sense of chaos, urgency, and resilience. Through gestural mark-making, vibrant colour, and dynamic composition, his work unfolds in an explosive matrix, where thin, transparent layers of oil paint echo a fragile perception of belonging—shaped by the trauma of displacement.

Amy Rusch (b. 1990) is a Cape Town-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans diverse mediums. Her work explores a vibrational expression of mark-making through stitched threads on layers of found plastic bags. The layering of plastic, shaped by the motion and soundscape of the stitching process, reflects both the aural and material aspects of contemporary culture. The threads serve as an attempt to connect and comprehend the vastness of stratigraphic time, stretching across millions of years.

Klare van Heerden / KMVH (b.1999), is a Cape Town based artist who explores emotion in the form of landscape. Each work is a meditation on stillness, grief, and transformation, which translates inner psychological states into the visual language of the ocean. Working with charcoal and acrylic on canvas and wood, van Heerden captures the movement and moments between the empty calmness and the thunderous turbulence, which offers a contemplative encounter with the emotional depth of nature and the psyche.

Karla Nixon (b. 1990) is a visual artist based in Durban, South Africa, whose practice draws primary impetus from direct material exploration, with paper at its core. She constructs  images and objects responding to her surrounding environments-urban, domestic, and natural-by hand-cutting, tearing, sculpting, and reassembling. Her work is grounded in an ongoing investigation of how colour, texture, and fragmentation operate as a language of presence shaping sensorial and emotional encounters.