What happens when research refuses to stay still?
What happens when ideas move between disciplines, memories meet materials, and personal experiences collide with technology, ecology and the world around us?
Those questions sit at the heart of Relational Trans_Positions, the 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform, an ambitious exhibition exploring research not as a fixed destination, but as an ongoing act of becoming.
Presented by the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) Gallery, the annual platform brings together eleven academics, associates and artists in residence from multiple fields and creative practices.
Curated by Dr Farieda Nazier, FADA Gallery curator, the exhibition opens on 10 September and runs until 9 October at the FADA Gallery, Bunting Road Campus.
When knowledge starts to move
At the centre of Relational Trans_Positions is a simple but powerful idea: knowledge is not always created in isolation.
Instead, it can emerge through encounters, translations and exchanges.
The exhibition brings this idea to life through diverse creative practices that explore how meaning and experience can shift when they move between different contexts.
The featured artists are Christa van Zyl, Gavin Krastin, John Shirley, Leon Krige, Leora Farber, Martin Bolton, Neil Lowe, Oupa Sibeko, Tobias Barnard, Xylan de Jager and Zinhle Zulu.
Their works come from different perspectives and practices, yet collectively they investigate the spaces between things — between self and other, past and present, material and immaterial.
This is where the exhibition finds its energy.
Beyond traditional boundaries
The FADA Creative Research Platform sits at the intersection of critical inquiry and creative production.
It embraces forms of knowledge-making that move beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries, creating space for ideas, materials, memories and experiences to shift, connect and transform.
The exhibition explores themes including abstraction, embodiment, ecological entanglement, technological mediation and material transformation.
These themes draw attention to the in-between spaces where boundaries become less defined and new possibilities can emerge.
For Dr Farieda Nazier, that transformation is central to understanding the exhibition.
“Exhibitions like Relational Trans_Positions illuminate how research can be expressed through material, visual, and experiential forms, fostering dialogue, reflection, and engagement.”
Rather than presenting research as a collection of definitive answers, the exhibition embraces transformation.
“Instead of offering fixed conclusions, the works celebrate transformation, demonstrating how meaning evolves through interaction and connection,” says Nazier.
Transposition as becoming
The title itself offers a clue to the exhibition’s thinking.
In this context, transposition is more than moving something from one position to another.
It becomes an act of becoming.
Through the featured works, audiences are invited to consider how identities, experiences, materials and ideas can change as they encounter something new.
The result is an exhibition that does not ask visitors simply to look at art.
It asks them to consider how they understand the world — and how that understanding can change through connection.
That approach also connects with the broader ethos of the University of Johannesburg, which places experiential learning and societal impact at the centre of its daily activities.
An exhibition designed for encounter
Relational Trans_Positions is ultimately about relationships.
The relationship between people and their environments.
Between technology and experience.
Between memory and material.
Between research and creative practice.
And between the artwork and the person standing in front of it.
By creating space for these encounters, the exhibition suggests that knowledge is not static. Instead, it is continually shaped and co-created through movement, connection and exchange.
The conversation continues beyond the gallery
The exhibition will also feature a public programme designed to extend its ideas beyond the gallery walls and engage the broader community.
FADA4Kids Youth Activation
12 September | 11h00–15h00
Young artists are invited to explore and expand their creativity through hands-on and engaging activities.
Curatorial Panel Discussion
23 September | 17h00–18h30
The public is invited to join a Curatorial Panel Discussion designed to deepen understanding of the exhibition’s themes.
Artist-led Walkabout
3 October | 11h00–13h00
Visitors can join an Artist-led Walkabout offering an opportunity to engage with the exhibition through the perspectives of the artists themselves.
These programmes add another layer to the exhibition’s central idea: that understanding grows through participation, dialogue and exchange.
A creative laboratory for new thinking
The exhibition also reflects the wider role of FADA Gallery as an in-house experimental and transformative creative lab.
The gallery is devoted to stimulating innovative thinking through art- and design-based experiences. Its programme brings together curated exhibitions, events, talks and new media as part of the broader FADA teaching, learning, research and development environment.
It also creates opportunities to connect students, staff, alumni and the local art community with developments in South African art, design and architecture.
With Relational Trans_Positions, that mission takes on a particularly fluid form.
Research becomes material.
Ideas become encounters.
And encounters become opportunities for new understanding.
Step into the conversation
Relational Trans_Positions does not promise simple answers.
Instead, it offers something arguably more valuable: a space to question, connect and reconsider.
As eleven artists and researchers explore the movement between disciplines, materials, experiences and perspectives, audiences are invited to enter that movement themselves.
Because sometimes research does not end with an answer.
Sometimes, it becomes something new.
Exhibition Details
Exhibition: Relational Trans_Positions
Event: 2026 FADA Creative Research Platform
Curator: Dr Farieda Nazier
Opening: 10 September 2026
Exhibition dates: 10 September – 9 October 2026
Venue: FADA Gallery, Bunting Road Campus
Artists: Christa van Zyl, Gavin Krastin, John Shirley, Leon Krige, Leora Farber, Martin Bolton, Neil Lowe, Oupa Sibeko, Tobias Barnard, Xylan de Jager and Zinhle Zulu
Opening RSVP:
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/TTtN3qVJg6
Public Programme RSVP:
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/r/ypvWFJmpjy
