—defunct context

The curatorial fellows of 2026 invite you to Connect the Dots, a gesture of engagement between audience and ornaments to make intangible connections tangible we hope to see you there #distruptingthespace

Please join us for a Lunchtime Lecture titled Hear her Calendar system a year of Thirteen months by the artist Bianca Baldi @bianca_baldi This forms part of the @defunctcontext visiting scholar programme. In this lecture, Bianca Baldi presents her recent body of work developed during her PhD, examining how knowledge is produced and disrupted through narrative, image-making, and material processes. Her process unfolds through engagement with material, sensing, and practice, treating materials not as passive substances but as active collaborators in the development of ideas. Working across film, installation, and writing, she explores how identity and history are constructed, and how these systems can be challenged through epistemic disobedience. Returning to her alma mater @michaelisschooloffineart she reflects on her parcours from her studies in Cape Town to her international exhibition practice. Michaelis Lecture Theatre, Hiddingh Campus Open to the public, no RSVP required Please note that the venue is accessible by staircase only.

Please join us for a Lunchtime Lecture titled Some Spirits Need a Re-introduction by Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka, Founder of Modzi Arts @modziarts in Lusaka, Zambia. Created as a platform for artistic expression for artists, it has since grown to become a centre in developing and expanding the Zambian art scene through research and local dialogue, with programmes of artists’ residencies, mentorship, exhibitions, performances, concerts and the archives spanning in Modzi. The word ‘modzi’ is Chichewa for ‘one’. Ba Taonga’s interest are on artistic memory, art production, design, ancestor, the relationship between indigenous values and modern African societies, reviving knowledge systems and African history. Her work involves concert and exhibition production, research methodology’s, arts administration, curating, mentorship and advocacy in Zambia and internationally. Ba Taonga refuses to label any academic reference, all her schooling is from lived perspectives, intergenerational collective knowledge that has been passed on to her by the elderly and her ancestors. Through her work at Modzi Arts, she has initiated programmes like Modzi Arts Gallery a contemporary exhibiting space expanding the profiles of collaborative Zambian artists for international art fairs, collectors and institutions, Afro Ndi Luso Research a research residency for African artists living on the continent to develop research methodologies around African ancestral technologies, Modzi AIR a self-funded project residency for artists from around the world and the Zamrock Museum a space dedicated to the preservation, reviving and celebration of Zamrock music and its’ popular culture through archiving, research, lectures, initiation, performances and exhibitions. Date: Wednesday 15th April 2026, 1pm - 2pm Venue: Michaelis Lecture Theatre, Hiddingh Campus, UCT Open to the public, no RSVP required. Please note that the lecture venue is accessible by a staircase only.

The Sky and @georgemahashe @defunctcontext , Zikomo for the invitation into my spiritual journey through Cape Town and pour out and in the energy within the Universe and the university. We love learning and sharing… Never did I expect to enter such spaces with no academic background, in this space one would argue, what really makes a curator? #defunctcontext #modziarts #curatorship Zikomo @modziarts

- Grond Stories publication process “This publication reflects on a collection of visual moments, encountered through my notebook practice during various journeys within Southern Africa. Starting at home in South Africa, then branching into Botswana and Namibia. Through my telling of these stories in the context of the multifaceted creative project, Grond Stories, I hope to help generate a resilient archive celebrating our living heritage.” ~ These stories are not mine alone. As I bind the pages and ceramics to the leather, I am reminded: I share these stories with a very beautiful community who have made their mark and continue to shed light. I am in awe when I see what has emerged from these years of gathering knowledge from the land and its children. Deeply humbled by the journey in all ways 🐢🌀⛰😮‍💨🤲🏾🤎🌖🌊 I extend gratitude to @defunctcontext for hosting Grond Stories at @michaelisschooloffineart and helping to facilitate the evolution of the work since its inception. Thank you to the publication team for all the effort and energy. Publication management: @georgemahashe Printing & image editing: @maccmckay Studio & admin assistance: @thatodoesthings Direction, art & writing: @xam.die.kreator Copy editing: @_khumo Foreword: @nkosenathikoela Photographs: @sthandomasuku , @visulekabunda , @xam.die.kreator ~ Kai gangans vir almal wat op staan vir grond stories! Aba té !habesi //aan, camagu !qhoe, camagu !gqi…grond is al wat os is

Had the immense privilege of again expanding my own knowledge of light and optics through working with @defunctcontext to help develop and prototype an optical system for @georgemahashe ‘s amazing new camera obscura installation for the @biennale_sa final work in the last slides resembles Mahashe’s earlier pavilion prototype here in Cape Town which you may recognize if you visited some of my sonic performances in the last years. This version of the structure houses a dark space which uses telescope grade lenses to filter light in a series of intersecting channels and project images of the outside world into the space. The structure is itself an instrument which uses sophisticated analog optical processes to “pull” spaces and images from a distance and project them as an immediate surface within the camera obscura. While working one day I looked at the lenses in awe and reflected aloud “I would love to see what a rainmaker would do with technology like this.” Dr Mahashe responded incredulously “this!” 🙇‍♂️ Ke a leboga

many months of research, salt creep, dry hands and brine making later and @defunctcontext Camera Obscura#0 Mafadi has been released into the world through the diriyah contemporary art biennale 2026 👏🏾 congratulations @georgemahashe and thank you to the curatorial team and everyone who played a part in the project! feel very proud to have been part of this production 🙏🏾🧂

So excited to participate in the Diriyah contemporary art biennale 2026. Congratulations to Nora Razian & Sabih Ahmed. Thobela Mafadi, grateful to @hey_thisislebo and @thatodoesthings for the salt work that expands the pavilion🐝 shout out to @kosmothestarkid for plotting the periscope🐚 gratitude @kabelo_malatsie and @tshego_mabaso for the magic☄️ See Camera obscura#0 Mafadi outside B3 at Jax district.

This is salt - Pt 2. Thinking about salt as both practical and sacred. Historically used as currency, it was a medium of exchange long before money, known as 'white gold'. Then and now: - A medium that carries intention and memory in rituals. - A harmonizer - regulating body, space, and thresholds - An archive that records non-linear time by crystalising, hardening, dissolving, cracking, corroding and preserving. - Intelligence - having observed the making process by Tsonga women in Baleni, there is an inbuilt logic at work, ensuring not only the saltiness of salt, but also the precise, pristine formation of crystals. - Medicine. Used in its solid form or liquid form (brine) - corrective, protective and restorative. - A preservative — ensuring what matters endures. It holds, traps, contains. In the photos above, it holds pigment. Photos: Salt and brine from Baleni.

This is salt! Pt. 1. . What more is there to know about salt beyond its culinary uses? Well, a lot. . @thatodoesthings and I had an opportunity to meet VaTsonga women who make salt from scratch in Baleni, Limpopo. Their process of making involves ritual, reliance on elements such as water, fire and soil/sand, letsema and the use of indigenous technologies. The salty sand extracted from the river banks (Klein Letaba River) is mixed with water, filtered and what remains is brine that's boiled and reduced to salt. The salt extracted and made here is said to be mineral rich. Historically, this salt, also then known as white gold, was used for bartering, and as a currency. The site where they harvest and make this salt is some meters away from a sacred thermal spring, whose waters flow right next to them, and is used in this process. There are mounds made from years of debris from the making process, which have become part of the landscape, almost sheltering them in. It is quiet, and inviting. The entire process is quite interesting and I had a lot of questions here. However, there is a point at which scholarly, interview style questions become insufficient, mostly because grandmothers gently resist them. At this point, they speak in what sounds like riddles, in their own languages, and it is here that you're invited to listen for these nuanced registers with and through your body and its senses. Here, we learn to understand what they're saying beyond the oral. .

Reminiscing on a recent research field trip with @thatodoesthings for @defunctcontext 🥹. My first time in Limpopo and such a fulfilling experience. Time slowed down, and a few days felt like an extended time because of the depth of lived experience we had there 🥹. This post is about some of the unexpected blessings encountered on this trip. . Being drawn to grandmothers, it was quite amazing meeting boNkgono who do work that has been passed down to them, and they steward it with grace. The most unexpected blessing was their prayers over lives- Thato's grandmother at her home, and Nkgono Maria who makes salt at Baleni. I strongly believe in prayers not expiring - they're banked in a vault and keep us going throughout our lives. So, this was a huge blessing. I also believe in gardens having a sense of sacredness similar to that of a kraal, so finding myself in 2 gardens - Thato's grandmother's and Nkgono Noria Mabasa's garden - was yet another immersive experience. And what's more - we got to dip our feet in a sacred hot spring. Despite knowing that this is a 'hot' spring, I was sooo fascinated by the temperature, the feeling of heat coming from water on the ground! This is not even the actual work that we were there to do (will post on this soon) - these were unplanned, unexpected experiences that have enriched my life and make me yearn for more of immersive, slow experiences, travel and the presence of grandmothers. .