UNATHI MKONTO

Forming part of Goodman Gallery’s reimagined [Working Title] series – a year-round incubator programme for South African artists led by curator Nandi Jakuja – the exhibition also sits in dialogue with Mkonto’s forthcoming solo presentation at Frieze London in October 2026.

Working primarily with fine-grained beechwood, Mkonto constructs a series of repeated, slanted and minimal forms that operate collectively rather than as discrete objects. Installed in relation to one another, these elements create a continuous visual field – an environment that invites viewers to move through and read the space as one unravelling structure. The works embody the artist’s ongoing refinement of architecture into its most reduced components, focusing on the generative relationship between point, line and plane.

At the core of the exhibition is a conceptual inquiry into the emotional and spatial conditions of landlocked Johannesburg. The title, If Joburg had a beach, who would go?, introduces a speculative premise by Mkonto – who is based in Cape Town, has previously lived in Johannesburg and was born in the Eastern Cape town of Peddie – ultimately questioning where energy is stored and how it forms within urban life. He approaches Johannesburg as a mutable condition – a state of mind as much as a physical place – shaped by histories of division, movement and adaptation. In this sprawling installation, as per the title of one series presented, “lines become waves and waves become infinite waves”.

Mkonto’s titular inquiry unfolds in relation to broader shifts in how space is occupied and contested across South Africa. Recent reporting from news outlets such as the Daily Maverick and The New York Times have pointed to the increasing privatisation and uneven occupation of urban space – from city centres reshaped by short-term rental economies in Cape Town to the instability of municipal governance in Johannesburg – conditions that continue to determine access.

The work engages the legacy of apartheid through what the artist describes as an “emotional landscape” of space. In this context, architecture becomes a site of both memory and possibility, of what he refers to as “restoring and generating forces”. Here, the beach is a metaphor for a city, with the ocean drawing its energy from its floor, and the urban centre a site of inspiration. Mkonto’s structures suggest a form of “medicinal” or ancestral architecture, grounded in imagination and contradiction, where systems of order are reconfigured and alternative spatial logics emerge. A series of cylinders reference the iconic towers in the Johannesburg urban environment, appearing displaced within the evocation of an oceanic environment. Rather than buildings, “I’m looking for the highest waves in Johannesburg,” Mkonto explains. “Deep water waves.”

Materially, the use of beechwood – often treated in a restrained, almost monochromatic register – emphasises texture, light and form. This reduction strips away the decorative or symbolic excess often associated with architectural language, allowing the work to operate as a kind of visual vocabulary. Repeated circular motifs, for instance, reference the foundational “point” from which all structures develop, while also evoking organic forms such as fruit, agriculture or plant life, subtly linking built environments to natural systems. Through his ongoing use of this adaptable medium, Mkonto’s new visual vernacular is one he considers distinctively African.

Mkonto’s practice proposes architecture as a dynamic and relational process – one that can be relearned, reimagined and reinhabited. The exhibition invites viewers into an encounter with form that is at once sensory and reflective – using the city in which it takes place as a point of departure – prompting questions about how space is constructed, perceived and internalised.

The presentation will continue into Mkonto’s booth at Frieze London later in the year, where this body of work will evolve within the context of the fair environment. This follows Mkonto’s nomination by Yinka Shonibare as part of the Artist-to-Artist initiative, whereby established artists select emerging voices for solo presentations at the fair. Goodman Gallery’s support of the presentation reflects its ongoing commitment to expanding the [Working Title] programme across both local and international contexts.