Media Release
Zeitz MOCAA presents IMPRINT, the current iteration of the Koyo Kouoh Atelier
(Cape Town, South Africa, Thursday, 1 October 2026): Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is delighted to announce IMPRINT, the current iteration of the Koyo Kouoh Atelier at Zeitz MOCAA, bringing three Cape Town-based publishing collectives as residents in the second-floor gallery: (B)andWi(d)th, Medupi Publishing, and Creative Knowledge Resources. Co-curated by Nathalie Viruly, and Dr Greer Valley, and supported by Bulelwa Kunene, Angela Muritu and Emme Pretorius, IMPRINT will be on view from 2 October 2026 to 2 April 2028 on Level 2 Elevator Side of the museum.
IMPRINT is the mark left behind: the residue of thought made material, the pressure of a hand, an inked fingerprint, a method, an encounter. It is both trace and action—the impression that remains after something has passed through, and the act of pressing into the world so that something might endure, circulate, or return in altered form. Minor changes in major institutions. An imprint names a publisher, a lineage, a signature, but also the temporary conditions under which ideas gather, settle, or regain elastic form.
The collectives use the space as a site of production and experimentation. Structured in six-month iterations—sometimes overlapping, sometimes in isolation—the residency invites each collective to bring its own research trajectories, styles, and material concerns. Some tend towards critical theory; others publish poetry, workbooks, websites, or scores, or work across radio. Where the collectives differ, they share modes of borrowing, rewriting, and unlearning in pursuit of making ideas tangible.
Publishing, here, is noisy. It refuses the singular form. It includes artists’ books, other books, non-books, anti-books, quasi-books, instruction manuals, compilations, cassette tapes, musical scores, postcards, playing cards, posters, objects, ephemera, sound, radio, and pamphlets—forms made to circulate, made to move, made to propose new sequences for engaging publics. Each carries an imprint: of labour, relation, and the conditions from which it emerged.
To be a publisher is to tend to ideas and to forms of publicness. It is to devise forms through which knowledge travels—through airwaves, hands, tongues, and unknowns—without certainty of endpoint or interpretation. For some, it is to speak from the margins and build platforms as a force of agency where none previously existed. For others, it is to carry the urgencies of stance and attitude, and compose forms that linger on the skin, the mind, the inner ear, or the retina.
This impulse is not new. Local histories of independent publishing and pamphleteering speak to the same compulsions to organise communities and shape new grammars of becoming within, and against, dominant cultures. Publishing is an inherent political proposition, carried forward through infrastructures both fragile and resilient—and here, authored by the collectives through the full weight of their work.
By centring publishing—and especially self-publishing and multiple voices—rather than a single artist, the Atelier looks beyond the primary exhibitionary impulse of the museum. It turns towards the supplementary, the auxiliary, the otherwise, and the subtext: towards what becomes possible when critical cultural production is treated as central rather than peripheral.
In doing so, the Atelier unsettles the hierarchies of curatorial work, taking its cues instead from editorial and self-instituted forms: spaces where methods leave impressions, where traces of work are preserved or made finite, and where critique itself becomes a form of inscription. This includes a series of xeroxed readers for circulation, as well as reading groups, debates and discussions. Additionally, there is The Daily, a collaborative curatorial consciousness unfolding through submissions from the resident collectives, the curatorial team, fellows, with an invitation extended to the public. These ideas refuse the spectacle of the singular event in favour of radical informality, ad hoc gatherings, and methods that reflect the collectives’ own forms of publicness, authorship, and relation to the Museum.
As a groundbreaking institution dedicated to promoting and preserving contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora, this not-to-be-missed exhibition season reflects Zeitz MOCAA’s commitment to producing and presenting cutting-edge contemporary exhibitions and art historical knowledge, enhancing the careers of Africa’s most talented artists in the 21st century and beyond, strengthening its education programmes, and ensuring access for all.
Zeitz MOCAA’s exhibition and curatorial programming is generously supported by the Mellon Foundation and BMW South Africa.
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Issued by Zeitz MOCAA Communications.
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About Zeitz MOCAA
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is a groundbreaking public not-for-profit institution that collects, preserves, researches, and exhibits contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora; conceives and hosts international exhibitions; develops supporting educational, discursive, and enrichment programmes; encourages intercultural understanding; and ensures access for all.
The Museum’s galleries feature rotating temporary exhibitions, with dedicated space for the permanent collection. The institution also includes the BMW Centre for Art Education and the Koyo Kouoh Atelier, a museum residency programme for artists living and working in Cape Town.
Zeitz MOCAA, situated at the Silo District, South Arm Road, V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa, is open Monday through Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm (last entry at 5.30 pm). zeitzmocaa.museum
About the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation is the United States’ largest supporter of the arts and humanities. Since 1969, the Foundation has been guided by its core belief that the humanities and arts are essential to human understanding. The Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence and freedom that can be found there. Through our grants, we seek to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive. mellon.org
About the BMW Group
With its four brands BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce and BMW Motorrad, the BMW Group is the world’s leading premium manufacturer of automobiles and motorcycles and also provides premium financial and mobility services. The BMW Group production network comprises over 30 production sites worldwide; the company has a global sales network in more than 140 countries.
In 2023, the BMW Group sold over 2.55 million passenger vehicles and more than 209,000 motorcycles worldwide. The profit before tax in the financial year 2023 was € 17.1 billion on revenues amounting to € 155.5 billion. As of 31 December 2023, the BMW Group had a workforce of 154,950 employees.
The success of the BMW Group has always been based on long-term thinking and responsible action. The company set the course for the future at an early stage and consistently makes sustainability and efficient resource management central to its strategic direction, from the supply chain through production to the end of the use phase of all products. www.bmwgroup.com