Zeitz MOCAA Publications

Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted
Cauleen Smith
2026
978-1-0483-0481-7
R 1 600

Accompanying Los Angeles-based artist Cauleen Smith's first major survey exhibition on the African continent, Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted brings together the ideas, histories and imaginative possibilities that run through Smith’s expansive practice. Moving across film, installation and visual culture, the publication explores her engagement with Pan-African traditions and futures, Black cinema, Afrocentric aesthetics, Black feminism and science fiction.

The monograph includes the artist's voice in notes presenting special insight into her relationship with the late Koyo Kouoh, as well as in conversation with British-Ghanaian writer and theorist Kodwo Eshun. Further readings of her practice are offered by South African writer, filmmaker, cultural worker and artist Milisuthando Bongela-Davis; American journalist, editor and critic Siddhartha Mitter; Nigerian-American writer, poet, artist-curator and educator Deborah Olatunji; Swati research and arts practitioner Bulelwa Kunene; and Togolese-American curator and writer Evyn Bileri Banawoye. An introduction by exhibition curator Thato Mogotsi  situates Smith’s work within the geographical and conceptual terrain of the exhibition.

Together, these voices form a cross-continental conversation around Smith’s expansive practice, opening up different ways of encountering its histories and references. Richly illustrated and conceived as an extension of the exhibition, Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted reflects Smith’s ability to hold critique and care side by side.

We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight
Zohra Opoku
2026
978-1-04-928356-2
R 1 500

German-Ghanaian artist Zohra Opoku’s first survey exhibition on the African continent, We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, offers reflections on the multiplicity of identity, both personally and relationally. This accompanying exhibition monograph further delves into the nuanced nature of Opoku’s practice with critical contemplations by Ghanaian-Nigerian cultural strategist and curator Assumpta Dickens; Ghanaian-American writer Delali Ayivor; American curator Dhyandra Lawson; American scholar and curator Lauren Tate Baeza; and South African scholar, curator, and writer Dr Greer Valley. Exhibition co-curators Dr Phokeng Setai and Beata America lead the commentary with a shared curatorial statement for a penetrating observation into the exhibition and the artist.

Opoku’s multidisciplinary practice weaves between photography, screen printing, sewing, sculpture, and installation with soft considerations that trace ancestral roots and familial memory. Framed within the core themes of Ground, Breath, and Water—with its connections to origins and direction, stillness and vulnerability, as well as fluidity—the exhibition includes a careful selection of works spanning over a decade of practice.

The monograph mirrors these themes, gestures, methodologies and materiality, embodying the essence of Opoku’s concerns and probing extended engagements. Engagements with intention. Engagements that emphasise the patience, attention and layered complexity embedded in Opoku’s gentle and fluid interrogations into identity.

One Must Be Seated
Rita Mawuena Benissan
2025
978-1-03-706840-9
R 1 500

Produced on the occasion of the exhibition One Must Be Seated, this publication offers a rich and incisive engagement with the practice of Ghanaian-American artist Rita Mawuena Benissan. Bringing together critical reflections by British writer, cultural practitioner, and curator Ekow Eshun; Ghanaian writer and art historian Nana Oforiatta Ayim; and South African artist-curator Dr George Mahashe, the book deepens the conversations opened by the exhibition. Their essays are accompanied by a curatorial introduction by Curator Beata America, and a preface by the Editor, the late Koyo Kouoh, under whose directorship the exhibition and publication were conceived.

Benissan’s practice is both introspective and boldly declarative. Drawing on her bicultural upbringing and academic background in textile design, photography, and African Studies, she reanimates the visual language of Asante regalia—stools, umbrellas, goldthreaded cloths—reframing these as more than static artefacts or ceremonial emblems, but as living symbols charged with memory, authority, and renewal.

One Must Be Seated positions Benissan as a contemporary custodian of cultural heritage. Her work reflects the depth of Ghanaian traditions while actively contributing to their preservation and evolution, asserting the enduring vitality of Asante visual and material culture through a distinctly contemporary lens.

The Other Side of Now
Tuan Andrew Nguyen
2025
978-1-03-706701-3
R 850

Launched on the occasion of The Other Side of Now exhibition, this monograph offers a compelling and incisive engagement with the work of Vietnamese-American artist Tuan Andrew Nguyen. Through film, sculpture, and installation, Nguyen charts transnational movements of people and power through the overlooked histories of Senegalese Vietnamese descendants, Moroccan soldiers in Vietnam, and other communities shaped by the long afterlives of empire.

It brings together critical reflections by cultural practitioner and curator Marie Helene Pereira; Professor M. Neelika Jayawardane, a scholar of the transnational and transhistorical implications of colonialism; and Dr Greer Valley, Senior Curator at Zeitz MOCAA.

Nguyen frequently collaborates with descendants and archival stewards, crafting new films and archival stewards, crafting new films and sculptural works that insist on these histories being seen and remembered. In doing so, he challenges us to reconsider how histories are archived, inherited, and rewritten—questions that resonate deeply within African contexts and within Zeitz MOCAA’s broader mission.

Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers
A group exhibition catalogue
2024
978-1-03-706840-9
R 700

Seekers, Seers, Soothsayers offers critical reflections on the work of seven artists, Gladys Kalichini, Latedjou, Sekai Machache, Nyancho NwaNri, Pamina Sebastião, Buhlebezwe Siwani and Helena Uambembe. Their lens-based practices explore accounts and experiences connected to metaphysical or intangible realms.

Included in the publication are thought provoking essays by French Beninese filmmaker, curator and researcher Farah Clémentine Dramani Issaifou, Zimbabwean-born award winning writer, scholar, and cultural historian Panashe Chigumadzi, as well as essays from the curators of the exhibition Tandazani Dhlakama and Beata America.

The texts speak to the power of filmmaking as a decolonial strategy for the restitution of African film heritage, and the multiplicity of senses steeped within African cosmologies, that allows further understanding of the physical and spiritual world. The publication is designed by Untitled (Yvon Langué and Soukaina Aboulaoula).

GILT
Mary Evans
2023
978-0-7961-0788-6
R 750

Mary Evans draws from both familial and diasporic experiences to consider the ongoing wake and impact of violent histories of forced movement and migration that have shaped Black personhood. This monograph is a reflection on Evans’ oeuvre as a practice that uses the decorative to critique and counter the consumption of Black people and their labour. These nuances are explored in newly commissioned essays by a current generation of writers and thinkers, Thulile Gamedze and Kim M. Reynolds.

By distilling human forms into minimalist cut-outs, Evans strips away the specific to reveal the universal, addressing the historical weight of movement and belonging. The publication illustrates how Evans weaves personal history into a broader global tapestry, transforming simple materials into a rigorous social critique. Readers are invited to witness an artistic journey that balances aesthetic elegance with a fearless interrogation of how we occupy space and history.

Only Sun in the Sky Knows How I Feel
(A Lucid Dream)
Johannes Phokela
2023
978-0-7961-0787-9
R 850

For thirty years, Johannes Phokela has challenged and inspired audiences through his powerful and stirring imagery. This richly illustrated publication, Only Sun in the Sky Knows How I Feel–(A Lucid Dream), marks a major milestone in his career, following his landmark survey exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA.

The monograph traces Phokela's trajectory from his early iconographic and satirical explorations to his deeply political practice, firmly re-inserting him into both international and African art historical narratives alongside his peers. Zeitz MOCAA is proud to bring together a range of critical and personal reflections to celebrate his three decades of work. Featuring incisive essays by Alexandra Dodd and Athi Mongezeleli Joja, curated by Beata America, and edited by Storm Janse van Rensburg, the book highlights contributors who have collaborated, commissioned, or had transformative encounters with Phokela’s practice over the last thirty years.

Designed by softwork studios, this hard-cover book offers an essential and accessible engagement with a truly fearless artist.

Shooting Down Babylon
Tracey Rose
2022
978-0-6397-0732-7
R 1 500

Over a thirty-year trajectory, Tracey Rose shatters narrow identity tropes and interrogates the aesthetics of violence. Her practice relentlessly dismantles established social constructs, challenging the very frameworks of the human experience through raw, unflinching provocation. This period of her work functions as a rigorousinvestigation into the c onstructs that define and limit identity.

This monograph captures Rose’s subversive performative interventions—encounters that transcend spectacle to catalyse profound transformations. By synthesizing academic, curatorial, and personal reflections, the volume illuminates how these interventions spark critical discourse and command transformative experiences. These documented works serve as a vital testament to Rose's ability to unsettle and reconfigure the viewer's perspective.

In her recent practice, Rose pivots toward the sacred, embracing rituals and the intricate processes of healing. This evolution marks a shift from the confrontational aesthetics of her earlier years toward a practice rooted in process-led restoration. The publication maintains an intellectual gravity while honoring the emotional resonance of an artist who remains a vital provocateur, offering a comprehensive view of her journey from subversion to restorative grace.

Home Is Where the Art Is
A Zeitz MOCAA group exhibition publication
2022
978-0-620-96389-3
R 780

This deluxe, full-colour volume records the making of and public responses to Home Is Where the Art Is, a non-juried, democratic celebration of art owned and made by the people of Cape Town organised by Zeitz MOCAA.

Boldly hospitable and wide open in its embrace, this daring exhibition was launched at a pivotal moment, in October 2020, as South Africa emerged from the enforced isolation of its first hard-hitting lockdown in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. After a three-week open call, Cape Town residents donned their masks and stepped out to deliver their artworks in person to several collection points across the larger metropolitan area, from Parow, to Langa, to Khayelitsha, to Muizenberg.

This book incorporates social media and critical commentary to offer multiple insiders’ views of what the experience was like, for curators, artists, critics and audiences alike. Polyvocal in tone, and all-embracing in
spirit, it is a celebration of the creative spirit of a city in a moment of radical reflection and transformation. Home Is Where the Art Is is a love letter to art, artists and our city, Cape Town.