Media release
ZEITZ MOCAA TO HONOUR OTOBONG NKANGA WITH PRESTIGIOUS AWARD FOR ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE AT 2025 GALA
Zeitz MOCAA recognises an art industry luminary who has made exceptional contributions to the art ecology and the museum.
The annual Gala raises funds in support of the museum’s curatorial and education programming.
The Collateral Programme offers exclusive access to Cape Town’s art scene, attracting celebrated art professionals and enthusiasts from around the world.
(CAPE TOWN, Thursday, 12 December 2024) Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) proudly announces Otobong Nkanga as the recipient of the 2025 Zeitz MOCAA Honorary Award for Artistic Excellence at its highly anticipated Gala on Friday, 21 February. The Zeitz MOCAA Honorary Awards are a tribute to visionaries whose contributions are essential to the thriving contemporary art scene on the Continent. Their impact resonates far beyond artistic realms, inspiring positive change and fostering cultural dialogue.
The Gala is the museum’s annual fundraiser and a much anticipated event in the Cape Town art calendar. This elegant gathering plays a crucial role in advancing the institution’s mission to exhibit, collect, preserve and research contemporary art from Africa and its Diaspora. Proceeds from the Gala directly benefit the museum’s curatorial and education programming, enabling the institution to conceive and host international exhibitions; develop supporting educational, discursive and enrichment programmes; encourage intercultural understanding; and ensure access for all.
“The Honorary Award for Artistic Excellence recognises an exceptional individual who has forged an indelible impression on the contemporary art landscape in Africa and the Diaspora. It is a privilege to present this prestigious award to a prolific industry luminary such as Otobong Nkanga,” says Koyo Kouoh, Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA.
Otobong Nkanga’s multidisciplinary practice examines the complex social, political, ecological and material relationships between bodies, territories, minerals and the earth. Unsettling the divisions between minimal and conceptual or sensual and surreal approaches, the artist’s research-based practice constellates humans and landscapes, organic and non-organic matter. Through drawing, installation, performance, photography, textiles and sculpture, Nkanga creates pathways translating the natural world – its plants, herbs, minerals and living organisms – into networked, aggregated situations evoking memory, labour, home, care, ownership, emotion, touch and smell. Reframing people and objects as compressed multitudes and as entities that come into being in relation to other entities, Nkanga deftly weaves insights from geology, botany, poetry and non-Western knowledge systems. Her works’ allusions to the reparative potentials of connectivity, urgently gesture towards the possibility of more livable futures.
Koyo Kouoh will offer laudatory remarks at the awards ceremony in recognition of Otobong Nkanga’s exceptional contributions to the art ecology and the museum. Kouoh has been leading Zeitz MOCAA on a transformative journey since May 2019. Prior to this appointment, she was the founding Artistic Director of RAW Material Company, a centre for art, knowledge and society in Dakar, Senegal. Kouoh was appointed by the Board of La Biennale di Venezia, upon the recommendation of President Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, as Director of the Visual Arts Department to curate the 61st International Art Exhibition to be held in 2026. At Zeitz MOCAA, her curatorial work focuses on in-depth solo exhibitions by African and African-descent artists. As such, she has co-curated (alongside Precious Mhone) Otobong Nkanga’s Acts at the Crossroads (2019). She has organised meaningful and timely exhibitions, and, active in the critical field of the arts community in a pan-African and international scope, Kouoh has a remarkable list of publications under her name. Kouoh is the recipient of the Grand Prix Meret Oppenheim 2020, the Swiss Grand Award for Art that honours achievements in the fields of art, architecture, critique, and exhibitions.
The Annual Gala celebrates the artistic excellence the continent and its vast Diaspora offers, drawing a global, regional and local audience of patrons, philanthropists, practitioners and collectors and cultural luminaries. Guests will be treated to a red carpet welcome and private reception over a glass of bubbly in the museum’s Atrium to usher in an evening of thought-provoking art installations and captivating live musical performances. An exceptionally curated gastronomic experience follows at Zeitz MOCAA’s level 6 restaurant, Ocular Lounge. The Gala will be expertly hosted by Zeitz MOCAA Global Council member and entrepreneur, Jo-Ann Strauss, one of South Africa’s most respected media personalities.
The exclusive invite-only Zeitz MOCAA Gala Collateral Programme is specially curated by art advisor Hamzeh Alfarahneh and hosted by Koyo Kouoh, and runs from Friday, 21 to Sunday, 23 February 2025. The three-day programme brings together some of the world’s most celebrated art professionals and enthusiasts. Curated to offer unparalleled access into Cape Town’s thriving art scene, patrons and friends of Zeitz MOCAA are invited to an immersive experience of the city’s rich cultural offering while fostering meaningful relationships and cultivating lasting connections. Highlights include artist walkabouts, private studio visits, gallery visits for exclusive previews, cocktail receptions, and other intimate gatherings, ensuring a memorable experience of the city’s peak summer art season.
We look forward to welcoming you among invested individuals from the art, fashion, film and all industries to celebrate contemporary art from Africa and its Diaspora.
The Zeitz MOCAA Gala 2025 is proudly supported by BMW South Africa, Don Julio, Hazendal Wines, YourLuxury Africa, and The Aleit Group. For more information, contact Tiffany Andrews, Partnerships Manager, at tiffany.andrews@zeitzmocaa.museum.
Please find more information here. For media enquiries, please contact Evaan Jason Ferreira at evaanjason.ferreira@zeitzmocaa.museum
MEDIA TOOLKIT
About Zeitz MOCAA
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) is a 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 strives towards access for all. The museum’s galleries feature rotating temporary exhibitions with dedicated spaces for the permanent collection. The institution also includes the BMW Centre for Art Education and The Atelier, a museum residency programme for artists living and working in Cape Town.
Zeitz MOCAA is situated at the Silo District, South Arm Road, V&A Waterfront in Cape Town, South Africa, and is open Monday through Sunday, 10 am to 6 pm (last entry at 5.30 pm). www.zeitzmocaa.museum