Thato Toeba’s FNB Art Prize Exhibition Opens at Johannesburg Art Gallery

By Mondays Mag | Arts & Culture

FNB Art Prize Exhibition at JAG: 06 September 2026

Johannesburg’s art calendar reached a significant moment on Sunday, 6 September, as 2025 FNB Art Prize winner Thato Toeba opened their much-anticipated solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), bringing together an artistic practice shaped by questions of identity, history, power and representation. Thato Toeba’s FNB Art Prize Exhibition Opens at Johannesburg Art Gallery.

The exhibition forms part of the wider cultural programme surrounding FNB Art Joburg 2026, transforming the prize from a moment of recognition into an opportunity for deeper public engagement with an artist whose work continues to challenge how we see, remember and interpret the world.

Now in its 15th iteration, the FNB Art Prize has established itself as one of the significant platforms for recognising contemporary artistic practices from across the African continent. Previous recipients include Kudzanai Chiurai, Portia Zvavahera, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Bronwyn Katz and Lindokuhle Sobekwa. This year, the spotlight falls on Toeba — notably the first artist from Lesotho to receive the prize.

Born in 1990, Toeba is an artist, lawyer and social sciences researcher whose multidisciplinary background informs a practice that refuses easy answers. Working across collage, photomontage and assemblage, they bring together photographs, textures and materials to construct images that feel simultaneously personal, historical and political.

At the exhibition opening, that sense of dialogue was unmistakable. The occasion brought together art lovers, cultural practitioners and members of the creative community, with the Johannesburg Art Gallery providing an important institutional setting for the next chapter of Toeba’s practice. The exhibition was officially listed by FNB Art Joburg as part of its Open City programme.

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  Johannesburg’s art calendar reached a significant moment on Sunday, 6 September, as 2025 FNB Art Pri

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  Johannesburg’s art calendar reached a significant moment on Sunday, 6 September, as 2025 FNB Art Pri

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  Johannesburg’s art calendar reached a significant moment on Sunday, 6 September, as 2025 FNB Art Pri

Toeba’s work does not demand that audiences arrive at one definitive interpretation. Instead, the compositions invite viewers to pause. A photograph can become evidence, memory or metaphor; a fragment of material can suggest a forgotten history; an assembled image can raise questions that remain deliberately unresolved.

That approach is particularly relevant within the broader atmosphere of FNB Art Joburg 2026, where exhibitions, public conversations, guided walkabouts and cultural programmes have turned Johannesburg into a meeting point for artists, collectors, writers and audiences engaging with contemporary African art.

The FNB Art Prize therefore represents more than an accolade for Toeba. It creates a platform for sustained artistic development, institutional visibility and public conversation.

And perhaps that is where the power of Toeba’s work lies: in its ability to slow us down.

In a culture increasingly dominated by images consumed in seconds, their work asks us to look again — and then look deeper.

Story By : MONDAYS MAG PUBLICATIONS (Editor : Tshepo Makondo )

Content By DIGITAL SUBJECTS

Story Covered By : NYIKO MKHACANE