Seven Voices, Five Nations: Absa’s Pan-African Art Series Tells the Stories of a Continent
Absa is excited to announce the launch of a dynamic series of gallery exhibitions dedicated to the Absa L’Atelier Ambassadors—emerging talents in African contemporary art whose creations embody the richness, intricacy, and vibrancy of the continent. As part of their L’Atelier experience, these artists receive fully sponsored solo exhibitions, providing them with a unique opportunity to present their work in prestigious galleries across Africa.
This esteemed exhibition series serves as a fundamental component of the Absa L’Atelier program, which is now in its 39th year—making it one of the longest-standing and most esteemed visual arts development initiatives on the continent. Through its ongoing commitment to nurturing creative talent, Absa L’Atelier equips young African artists with essential resources, mentorship, and a public platform to showcase their artistry.
Central to the program is Absa’s conviction that every artist’s narrative is significant. These exhibitions transcend mere visual celebration; they serve as venues for storytelling, cultural introspection, and creative dialogue. Absa recognizes that individuals are multifaceted, shaped not only by numbers, job titles, or societal roles, but also by their dreams, passions, and hidden motivations that influence their journeys. By acknowledging these narratives, Absa believes that true opportunities lie within the essence of individuals and their lived experiences.
he 2025 Absa Gallery Exhibition Series
The series opens in Johannesburg with a powerful and deeply personal exhibition by Bulumko Mbete, the 2023 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto winner. Her solo show sets the tone for the journey ahead—inviting viewers to reflect on memory, inheritance, and the quiet echoes of the past through a body of work that is as intimate as it is expansive.
Like the sky, I’ve been too quiet
Solo exhibition by Bulumko Mbete
2023 Absa L’Atelier Gerard Sekoto winner
Gallery Momo, 52 7th Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg
24 May – 27 June 2024
Hands dialogue with the spirit as earth meets their embrace. Clay surrenders to touch, transforming into beads that contemplate ornament. This medium, drawn from our planet, undergoes metamorphosis. It evolves and echoes the forms in nature’s intricate patterns.
In 1997, Mbete’s grandfather embarked on a road trip along the eastern and central parts of South Africa. Mbete reflects on this guided route, and on the experiences, memories and inheritances that remain from a life lived. She ponders nature’s ability to conform to the narratives that we conjure and contemplates an intangible human voice. Geological echoes of time, memory and material encounter her gestures, which aim to bridge worlds. Through four installations, Mbete contemplates the terrain of familial memory and narrative.
In Sojourning, a collaborative sound installation with Kamil Hassim, Mbete uses the act of memory to reconstruct the sonic landscape of her grandfather’s journey. The piece was developed through conversations with her mother and aunt, their anecdotes and recollections serving as fragments from which a past is reassembled. Sound is the vessel through which loss is made present.
In Our Mother’s Gardens engages with the 2021 documentary of the same name. The work explores the intricate relationships Black women navigate with maternal figures. It examines the architecture of closeness, vulnerability and struggle that forms the tethers of mother–daughter bonds, and reveals both tenderness and resilience in these intimate connections. The installation contains a collaboration with The Herd Designs.
Earthsong, Earth’s Time performs choreography with nature. Mbete contemplates what alchemy nature may offer in return for the act of performing generational traditions of embodied knowledge, labour and exchange with the natural world.
Reciting Memory turns toward iconography and gesture in ceramic forms, marking Mbete’s exploration of a new material language in her practice. Earth transformed by hands renders memory tangible through the traces left on it.
The handmade sculptures, beads and naturally dyed fabrics preserve meditative gestures embedded in their surfaces. Mbete records presence and documents the relationship between the self, nature and making practices. These works think through coexistence and what it means to leave our mark while honouring what came before us.
As part of her prize for winning the Gerard Sekoto Award, Bulumko also spent three months in Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts — a prestigious residency made possible through a partnership between the French Embassy in South Africa, the French Institute of South Africa (IFAS), the South African National Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA), and Absa.