As Tides Change - The temporality of the present feeds into the transformation of the future.

Anelisa Mangcu
Oct 16
2 min read

Now Showing: As Tides Change - The temporality of the present feeds into the transformation of the future.

Exhibition text:

As Tides Change is a meditation on movement, transformation, and the in-between. Like the rhythms of the ocean, African histories, identities, and creative expressions are never still. They shift, re-form, and rise again through time, place, and material. This exhibition reflects on that continual state of becoming, where change is not a rupture but a return. It is a rethreading of old forms into new meaning. What we are experiencing now is not static or isolated. It is time-bound and constantly shaping what the future will become.

This exhibition is grounded in fluidity, not only in theme but also in material. Through fabric, thread, dye, scraps, and organic matter, these pieces move beyond the object to become vessels of memory, resistance, and reimagination. In many African traditions, to make is to remember. Gestures are passed through the hands of ancestors. Practices like sewing, dyeing, weaving, and mark-making carry the embodied knowledge of generations. Each repetitive motion becomes a quiet act of preservation, an ancestral muscle memory made visible.

These materials are not static. They shift in shape and form with time. A faded textile holds echoes of a protest

banner. A fragile thread mirrors the fragility and resilience of bodies in motion. A surface, seemingly ordinary,

transforms within this space. It suggests not only what it is, but also what it remembers and what it mightbecome.

Materiality is not just about what something is made of, but also how it feels through its texture, weight, temperature and how it invites new meanings. These works exist in tension with institutions that often prize permanence, scale, and neutrality. In contrast, we offer softness, ephemerality, and colour. We reclaim colour.

While global design aesthetics often lean towards the neutral and the muted, the works here use colour differently. Sometimes loud, sometimes quiet, but always deliberate. Colour is not merely aesthetic. It is a political and cultural choice, engaging with traditions, reclaiming joy, and questioning what modernity actually means in African and diasporic contexts.

As tides change, so do we. This exhibition is not a conclusion. It is a moment in motion, a space to witness how materials carry us, how traditions evolve, and how African ways of knowing continue to reshape contemporary art on their own terms.