ICTAF 2026

Thomas Wachholz (b.1984, Cologne) is a visual artist who lives and works in Cologne, Germany.

Wachholz’s paintings are intricate visual networks of formal traces and personal memories, structured through opaque colour fields, iconic symbols like stars and clouds, and grids outlined with geometric precision. By exploring the hidden dimensions of everyday materials, Wachholz distills the objects that inspire his work into a restricted palette of colours and shapes.

Many of his works feature striking surfaces created through the application of red phosphorus. At times, this element blankets an entire painting; in others, it takes abstract forms such as suns, radiating vertical lines, or the contours of larger shapes. The phosphorus grid, nearly dissolving into the composition’s geometry, symbolises the viewer’s role in “activating” the paintings through personal associations and memories.

Lulama Wolf (b. 1993) is a visual artist who lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

At the intersection of Neo-Expressionism and Modern African Art, Wolf explores the pre-colonial African experience through a contemporary lens. Her process involves smearing, scraping, and employing deep pigment techniques inspired by vernacular architecture. These techniques often incorporate patterns traditionally created by women to decorate traditional African homes.

Philip Emde (b. 1976, Mannheim, Germany) lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Emde studied Drawing and Printmaking at the Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (HWA), Hamburg under Prof. Ellen Sturm and Prof. Jovica Veljovic from 2000 to 2007. His artistic practice spans painting, installation, and artist books, often exploring narrative, humor, and the absurdities of everyday life through experimental visual strategies.

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.

Duncan Wylie (b. 1975, Harare, Zimbabwe) is a visual artist living and working between London and Paris. He is internationally recognised for his layered expressionist paintings, in which his technical skill, gestural brushwork, and bold colour use stand out. His works unfold through complex narratives and dynamic compositions, constructed from successive transparent layers of oil paint. Evoking a sense of instability, urgency and resilience, Wylie’s practice engages with themes of displacement, belonging and memory, where figuration and abstraction are held in productive tension.

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 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.

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.