Some of Johannesburg‘s most promising young designers joined forces for an exhibition at Design Week South Africa, using locally found and discarded materials to rewrite the narrative about their city.
The Price of Gold brought together work by 11 emerging talents inside Victoria Yards – a community space set in a converted steam laundry in the city’s Central Business District (CBD).
The Price of Gold exhibition took over Victoria Yards for South Africa Design Week
The innercity area has become notorious for its high crime rates and crumbling infrastructure since it was abandoned by big businesses and politicians following the end of Apartheid.
But The Price of Gold exhibition showcases the work of local designers and makers, who have found ways to make use of its hidden riches, whether scrap metal or Europe’s exported fashion waste, to create a kind of love letter to the city.
Khumo Morojele showcased “I Jozi” T-shirts made from discarded clothes
“The government has really given up on Johannesburg,” curator Nkhensani Mkhari told Dezeen. “You can see it in how the city decays. But we still love it.”
“What the city asks of each and every one of us is to take charge of your life,” he added. “How can you empower yourself, even when the circumstances aren’t really favourable? How can you make do?”
“I think that’s quintessentially Joburg,” he added.
T-shirts made in collaboration with upcyclers in Ghana were hung from the ceiling
In this spirit, the exhibition relies heavily on reclaimed materials sourced within the city limits.
Fashion designer Khumo Morojele created Johannesburg’s equivalent of the iconic “I NY” T-shirts, using the loving nickname Jozi and pieces of discarded clothing sourced from vendors in Dunusa, a sprawling second-hand market in the CBD.
Thato Nzimande created an Afrofuturistic storefront
“Joburg has come through a lot of paradigm shifts,” Morojele explained, nodding to its history as a gold rush mining town founded by white settlers. “We’re very interested in shifting it again to highlight the people that actually put in the work to sustain this city.”
“Right now, a lot of the aspiration is to Western ways of doing things and Western culture. But within town, within the centre of Joburg, is where all the culture comes from – and that’s the real gold.”
In the exhibition, the T-shirts were sold alongside pieces from local streetwear brands Frndly, Franasonic and Shwekebana, displayed in giant shrink-wrapped bales that recall the packaging in which the mountains of discarded clothes from the West first arrive in South Africa.
Nearby, Morojele also exhibited a series of patchwork T-shirts conceived during workshops with upcyclers at the Kantamanto second-hand market in Accra, Ghana, together with fellow designers Klein Muis and Berendja Valkeman.
The resulting pieces speak to the power of garments as cultural and political signifiers, combining European football shirts with the logos of luxury fashion brands and images of former US president Barack Obama.
Respect Your Elders updates second-hand furniture found across Johannesburg
Johannesburg fashion designer Thato Nzimande also worked with second-hand clothing to stage an imagined future storefront, providing an Afrofuturistic vision of what womenswear might look like without colonisation.
Elsewhere in the exhibition, vintage furniture brand Respect Your Elders exhibited modernist pieces sourced from local second-hand markets and refurbished with unexpected textiles, including Wassily Chairs reupholstered with faux fur and Persian rugs.
The furniture was displayed alongside textile works by Mandy Schindler
Similarly, engineer-turned-sculptor Kutlwano Makwela created a female figure, nicknamed Johannesburg’s Statue of Liberty, using industrial scrap metal from the local area and even transported her welding workshop into Victoria Yards for the duration of the show.
“How do you take something that nobody cares about and make them care,” Mkhari questioned. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about the whole time while putting this show together.”
Kutlwano Makwela created metal sculptures on site
The curator also brought in several projects that provide a sense of Johannesburg’s history, among them a metal light sculpture with cutouts reminiscent of cave paintings by artists James Delaney and Lady Skollie, and textile works covered in handmade earth pigments by architect Mandy Schindler.
More contemporary impressions come from director Jack Markovitz and his three-channel film Eyesore, which compares his own impressions of Johannesburg with archival footage shot by his mother, while artist Francesco Mbele created a slide show of photographs of the city from the 1970s to the 1990s, sourced during his weekly trips to the Rosebank Sunday Market.
Cave paintings informed this lighting sculpture by James Delaney and Lady Skollie
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa recently described Johannesburg as “not a pleasing environment” and launched a task force to take it “back to its glory days” ahead of the G20 summits set to take place here next month.
But Mkhari compares Johannesburg today to New York in the 1970s or East London pre-gentrification, when abandoned spaces and cheap rents created a haven for local artists and creatives.
“Everybody is super nostalgic about that period – and we’re there now,” the curator explained. “The great thing about the city is that it’s generous. It’s inexpensive to live in and that creates room for possibility.”
A slide show by Francesco Mbele showed found photos of Johannesburg
“We didn’t have money to do this exhibition,” he added. “We just did it. We did it off of small donations, and everybody just getting their hands dirty.”
Other highlights from the second edition of Design Week South Africa, which was launched in 2024 to showcase a new wave of local talent, include a new furniture brand that’s transforming standard plywood sheets into upscale furniture.
All photography by Hlengiwe Lala, apart from the top image by Jennifer Hahn.
The Price of Gold was on show from 19 to 12 October as part of Design Week South Africa. See Dezeen Events Guide for more design events and exhibitions around the world.
Project credits:
Artists: Jack Markovitz, Khumo Morojele, Klein Muis, Thato Nzimande, Kutlwano Makwela, Oratile Papi Konopi, Mandy Schindler, James Delaney x Lady Skollie, Francesco Mbele
Curator: Nkhensani Mkhari
Producer: Zano Nkosi
Producer and artist manager: Neo Lekhu
Sound installation: Shanti Cullis
Exhibition photography: Hlengiwe Lala
Poster photography: Paul Shiakallis
Partners: Jozi My Jozi, Design Week South Africa, Bose, Respect your elders, Frndly, Shwelebana, Franasonic
The post Emerging Johannesburg designers turn the city’s rags to riches in The Price of Gold exhibition appeared first on Dezeen.