There comes a moment in every artist’s journey when imagining the work is no longer enough.
The work has to become real.
For Thato Toeba, that moment is arriving inside one of Johannesburg’s most significant cultural spaces.
With only days to go before their FNB Art Joburg solo exhibition opens at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), Toeba is balancing the practical demands of installation with a much deeper question: what happens when an artwork encounters a building with a history and presence of its own?
“JAG is such a particular building. It has this monumental quality, and I think that has made me think differently about what an exhibition can be,” says Toeba.
“The architecture has its own history, its own authority, its own ghosts.”
The exhibition is the next chapter in a journey that began with Toeba’s 2025 FNB Art Prize win.
The prize included the opportunity to develop a solo exhibition at JAG. One year later, that opportunity has become a space for the artist to push their practice further, moving beyond the collage and archival processes that have helped define their work.
“There is a point where you have to stop imagining the exhibition and actually let it become something,” Toeba says.
“That is probably the hardest part.”
From childhood collages to challenging reality
Toeba’s relationship with collage began long before the work entered galleries.
As children, Toeba and their twin would cut pictures from magazines and use them to create new worlds in exercise books.
Years later, that childhood practice evolved into an artistic language for questioning history, memory and power.
Their background in law also contributed to an interest in systems that claim objectivity and authority.
Art offered another way to challenge those assumptions.
“I could take an image, cut it apart, put it next to something else and suddenly the authority of the original image became unstable,” says Toeba.
“I am interested in how realities are constructed, who constructs them, and what happens when you start moving the pieces around.”
That question has remained central to their practice.
But by the time Toeba won the FNB Art Prize, something else was beginning to happen.
The focus was no longer only on collage and archives.
The artist was beginning to ask whether the space around the artwork could become part of the artwork itself.
The winning body of work brought different strands of the practice together.
“There was the archive, there was photography, there was collage, there was history and politics, but there was also play,” Toeba says.
“I think it represented a moment of clarity.”
What happens when recognition becomes opportunity?
Awards can create a moment of recognition.
But for an artist, what happens after that moment may matter even more.
For Toeba, the FNB Art Prize created the opportunity to experiment, develop and think differently about what their work could become.
“There is something very generous about being told, essentially, you have this opportunity, now make something,” they say.
“It creates a different kind of pressure, but also a different kind of freedom.”
That freedom has come with new challenges.
Developing the JAG exhibition has required Toeba to think about installation, architecture, scale and the way audiences will move through the space.
For FNB Art Joburg Managing Director Mandla Sibeko, that evolution is an important part of Toeba’s practice.
Sibeko describes the artist’s work as “careful, considered, and honest about complexity”, particularly at a time when there is so much at stake in how stories are told and who gets to tell them.
When the gallery becomes part of the artwork
Perhaps the biggest revelation of the process has been the building itself.
Initially, Toeba imagined creating the work and then placing it inside JAG.
Time spent in the gallery changed that perspective.
“I had this idea that I would make the work and then install it in JAG,” they say.
“But the more time I spent there, the more ridiculous that idea seemed. The building is too present.”
That realisation has changed the exhibition.
Instead of simply placing objects inside a gallery, Toeba is considering the relationship between the work, the building and Johannesburg itself.
The city becomes another layer.
Toeba describes Johannesburg through movement, migration, extraction, aspiration, violence and reinvention.
Those forces connect directly with the artist’s wider interest in history and the ways knowledge is constructed.
“The exhibition has become less about putting objects into a room and more about figuring out what happens when the work, the building and the city start speaking to each other.”
History is not always behind us
For Toeba, history is not something safely contained in the past.
It remains present in cities.
It appears in movement. It appears in memory. It appears in the stories that are remembered, repeated and accepted as knowledge.
“These things are historical, but they are also completely present,” Toeba says.
That makes the opportunity provided by the FNB Art Prize particularly significant.
An ambitious artistic idea still needs the material conditions to become reality.
“An artist can have a very ambitious idea and still not have the material conditions to make it,” Toeba says.
“So when an institution says, here is a space, here is some support, take this seriously and make the work, that can change the trajectory of a practice.”
For FNB Chief Marketing Officer Linda Kachingwe-Sisya, that kind of progression is central to the purpose of the FNB Art Prize.
“The real measure of any art platform is not the moment of recognition itself, but what that recognition unlocks,” says Kachingwe-Sisya.
“Our ambition with the FNB Art Prize has always been to create opportunities that extend beyond the award, empowering artists to grow their craft, explore new creative frontiers and strengthen their presence in the contemporary art landscape.”
She describes Toeba’s journey to the JAG exhibition as a compelling example of that vision, showing how sustained support can help transform potential into lasting artistic impact.
An exhibition that refuses to give easy answers
For all the thought behind the exhibition, Toeba does not want to tell audiences exactly what they should see or feel.
Instead, the artist wants to leave room for uncertainty.
“I would rather people encounter something and have a feeling that there is more to it than what they can immediately understand,” they say.
“I hope they argue. Not necessarily with me, but with the work, with each other, maybe even with themselves.”
That openness feels particularly fitting for an exhibition concerned with how meaning is constructed.
There may be no single conclusion.
There may not even be a comfortable answer.
And that is precisely the point.
Toeba does not want the JAG exhibition to be remembered simply as the destination reached after winning an important award.
They want it to represent something more uncertain and more exciting: a moment when the possibilities of the practice became larger.
“I would rather it be the exhibition where I took a risk and opened something up,” they conclude.
Because arriving at a final answer is not the ambition.
“I want it to keep making problems for me.”
That may be the most revealing way to understand what lies ahead.
The FNB Art Prize opened the door.
JAG has provided the space.
Now Toeba is stepping into it — not to close the conversation, but to make it bigger.
Exhibition details
Thato Toeba’s FNB Art Joburg solo exhibition opens at the Johannesburg Art Gallery on Sunday, 6 September 2026.
