PRESS RELEASE
CUBICLE Series August 2025
Aug 4 – Aug 16, 2025
Cubicle is an ongoing platform at CIRCA Cape Town, giving artists scope to exhibit smaller bodies of artworks and site-specific installations for a two week period.
Part of the Heat Winter Arts Festival.
WALKABOUT & DRINKS ON THE LAWN 10:00 SATURDAY 16th AUGUST
Featuring:
GWEN VAN EMBDEN | MOUNTAIN+WATER 2
HANNAH MACFARLANE | THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN
KEABETSWE SEEMA | A DEPOSIT FROM HEAVEN
MIKKY GEORGE | THE STARS HAVE NO MOUTHS, AND I MUST ANSWER (THE GODS CALL MY NAME, AND I MUST SCREAM)
REBAONE FINGER | CHEESE GIRL: CONSPICUOUS GRANDEUR
SAMUKELISIWE MAJOLA | MENDING THE BROKEN
GWEN VAN EMBDEN | MOUNTAIN+WATER 2
Mountain + Water 2 is not only the refinement of the two titular elements of traditional Chinese shan shui landscape painting, but an inquiry into the act of seeing and remembering. A series of ink on unbleached linen horizon paintings, this body of work exemplifies Van Embden’s pursuit of purity in both process and subject. The paintings manifest as products of different cultures and histories, offering a space where personal experience and collective tradition can meet. For Van Embden, the horizon is not merely observed, but lived – transformed through ink, intuition and the purity of line into a record of what is both fleeting and eternal.
HANNAH MACFARLANE | THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN
The Forgotten Garden becomes a metaphor for internal and external terrains – for the soft spaces of the mind, the body and the land. It holds tension between containment and unruliness, control and surrender. These tactile wet-felted sculptural works and ceramics invite viewers to coexist with discomfort, to linger with ambiguity, and to navigate porous boundaries between self and environment, soft and hard, craft and sculpture, growth and loss.
KEABETSWE SEEMA | A DEPOSIT FROM HEAVEN
The dreamworld is both familiar and unfamiliar to us – a space inhabited by all, yet fully comprehended by none. A Deposit from Heaven situates itself within this surreal terrain. This body of work interrogates how the sustenance of fantasy becomes a radical act – how, by maintaining spaces for dreaming, we create a sanctuary where the Black woman’s interiority can unfold without compromise. In doing so, A Deposit from Heaven asks: what might be restored, imagined, or remembered when the Black woman is allowed to float, to fragment, and to reassemble – on her own terms?
MIKKY GEORGE | THE STARS HAVE NO MOUTHS, AND I MUST ANSWER (THE GODS CALL MY NAME, AND I MUST SCREAM)
With THE STARS HAVE NO MOUTHS, AND I MUST ANSWER (THE GODS CALL MY NAME, AND I MUST SCREAM) Mikky George interrogates their own imposter syndrome, calls for fame and the deification of jaded feelings. What started as an art piece fuelled by feelings of inadequacy and frustration has softly evolved into a conversation – a give and take between the artist and the art. The sporadic and anxiety-driven feelings are personified through the use of threaded material that obscures, reveals and confronts the pieces themselves, which are an almost nirvanic aim, each one representing an ideology and mythology. Through anger and frustration and eventual calm, the installation becomes a quiet sanctuary to the unpredictability of the self.
REBAONE FINGER | CHEESE GIRL: CONSPICUOUS GRANDEUR
A ‘Cheese girl’ is a South African term that can be understood as a social indicator of class privilege, applied when one is seemingly different from the greater community or even social circle one occupies. The term stems from Black South African township communities, where having a cheese sandwich in your school lunchbox was a luxury most households within the community could not afford. With Cheese Girl: Conspicuous Grandeur, Finger begins to expand her conception of 'cheesiness' by investigating the socio-economic landscape that has rapidly transformed how we imagine a society of equal wealth distribution.
SAMUKELISIWE MAJOLA | MENDING THE BROKEN
In her latest series, Mending the Broken, Majola presents textile artworks that embody the human spirit's resilience and unwavering desire for transformation. Weaving, at its essence, is both a physical and metaphorical practice capturing the ebb and flow of struggle, healing and renewal. Each artwork builds upon a foundation, a frame that holds not only the material but also the weight of tradition, memory and connection. These woven works become vessels, each thread a testament to hope as it binds with another, layering stories, identities and possibilities. Majola hopes to inspire others to find resilience in their own lives, and to see that even the smallest thread, when woven together, can hold great strength and beauty.
