WIP after the first few weeks in residence with Aaron Philander and Smiso Cele.
Some wonderful material interventions have been taking place since the onset of their project. We’re so excited to see how they progress as they work towards their concurrent solo exhibitions.
@aaronphilander_@smiso02
Photography by Calhoun Matthews
UPCOMING | SMISO CELE | TO SHORE UP THE WORLD
Join us for the opening of Smiso Cele, To Shore Up the World, at SMAC Gallery on Thursday, 7 May from 18h00 | 25 Church Street, Cape Town, City Centre.
Smiso Cele (b. 2002, Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) is a Johannesburg-based visual artist. Cele’s practice explores his interest in domestic spaces as sites of publicness and politics. It moves from the condition of the unfinished bedroom he shared with his siblings to an engagement with the developing state of the country. This exploration unfolds through objects once housed in that same bedroom, which functioned as a storage space due to the spatial impracticalities of the house in which he grew up.
Cele is the 2025 Cassirer Welz Award Winner, which led to a three-month studio residency at the Bag Factory and culminated in his second solo exhibition, entitled Ngiyiboneleni? He has also exhibited, with notable participation in Shifting Grounds (2025) at Ellis House Gallery, AFFECT/EFFECT (2024) at the UJ FADA Gallery, and Of Place and the Uncertain (2024), his first solo exhibition at Constitutional Hill. He has also participated in residencies at The Bag Factory Artists’ Studios (Young&Un-framed), Kromdraai Impact Hub at Nirox Foundation, and at Ellis House (2025).
Request a portfolio via DM or at [email protected]@smiso02
Lemkus Gallery is excited to announce its first duo residency between Aaron Philander and Smiso Cele, an ambitious attempt to allow promising young artists to practice in community.
Aaron Philander (b. 2002) is a Cape Town based artist sculptor working primarily with timber and found objects. Since his graduation from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2024, Philander has earned a strong reputation for his ability to transform discarded yet powerfully charged household articles into poetic assemblages that reflect intimately on questions of self,family and collective memory. His works trouble the tension of racial inhabitation in the aftermath of apartheid and offers a unique generational perspective on the ways oppressive structures can be traced psychologically and materially.
Notable solo exhibitions include 𝑁𝑎𝑛𝑎’𝑠 𝐾𝑖𝑡𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑛 at AVA Gallery in 2025 and 𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝑖𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑜𝑥 as a part of Everard Read’s Cubicle Series in 2026.
For his upcoming residency project, Aaron is interested in broadening his reference pool through research and dialogue, finding new discursive tools to frame his practice, and experimenting with new forms of material treatment and kinesis.
Smiso Cele (b. Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) is Johannesburg-based artist with a distinct and exciting visual language. Like Philander, Cele has a strong propensity for timber-based sculptural work and is similarly interested in the relationship between domestic spaces and the public domain. His work takes seriously the problem of space inherent in an injured South Africa, and uses the allegory of a common bedroom to convey the extent of unfinished structural progress.
He is the recipient of the 2025 Cassirer Welz Award and subsequent Bag Factory residency. Significant solo presentations include 𝑂𝑓 𝑃𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑈𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑡𝑎𝑖𝑛 (2024) and 𝑁𝑔𝑖𝑦𝑖𝑏𝑜𝑛𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑛𝑖?(2025).
Smiso hopes to extend his ongoing project, 𝐸𝑏ℎ𝑢𝑞𝑤𝑖𝑛𝑖, which uses shovels to explore the familial legacy of gardening inspired by his father’s vocation of two decades.
Ebhuqwini, 2025
Steel, shovels and plywood.
I made this work during my residency at @ellishouseartbuilding . Ebhuqwini refers to a dusty place. The same name I and my family used to refer to the bedroom I shared with my siblings growing up because of its unfinished floor. Bhuqwini (the room) was also used as a storage space, housing random things ranging from old TVs to gardening tools. To have started an art practice away from home has been to engage with histories of places I find myself in using objects most familiar to me.
📸: @melmbawu
