Six Cape Town artists' studio work opens 12 November

You can see six artists' residency work in Cape Town from Thursday 12 November. Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, known as Zeitz MOCAA, opens its group show Were It Not for Shadows that day. It stays up on Level 3 until Sunday 29 August 2027. That is nearly ten months to visit.

Dr Phokeng Setai, the museum's assistant curator, leads the project. All six artists are based in Cape Town and took part in the museum's Koyo Kouoh Atelier. Their residencies ran between 2019 and 2025.

One project per artist, with its year, appears on the page:

• Kemang Wa Lehulere made Laying Bare in 2019
• Haroon Gunn-Salie made Line in the Sand in 2020
• Thania Petersen made KASSARAM in 2021
• Igshaan Adams made Not Working (Working Title) in 2022
• Unathi Mkonto made TO LET in 2023
• Berni Searle made On Site in 2024

The list runs in order, with one project for each year from 2019 to 2024.

The context

Expect installations (artworks made to fill or change a room), tapestries, sculptures and photographic series. Each was made during a residency or inspired by one.

Its title comes from a 1933 essay by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows. That essay finds beauty in subtlety, ambiguity and shadow, the museum says. It also draws on the Crystallist Manifesto from Khartoum, Sudan. That text holds that no single view can hold the whole truth.

Its themes include site-specific commissions, embodied histories, socio-political aftermaths and South Africa's spiritual practices. Setai describes the show as honouring the unseen, experimental labour behind finished work, according to the e-flux listing. Support comes from the Mellon Foundation and BMW South Africa.

How to visit

Doors are open 10.00 to 18.00 every day, with last entry at 17.30. Tickets are booked online, and the page lists no prices. Plan ahead and book your ticket online first. Free one-hour tours run Monday to Friday at 12.30. Book them when you arrive, since places are few.

My own shadow has volunteered to join the weekday tour.

Our view

We would start with a free weekday tour, since the page says visitors book it on arrival. Then follow the list above in year order, from 2019 to 2024, to meet the six projects one by one.

Would you visit?