Exhibited at Spier Light Art 2025
Come Dance with Us honours invisible histories of women and labour. Ethereal, billowing figures invite audiences to dance with hidden histories revealed through sound, light, and movement. We collectively think through those who worked the land and honour them through the soft and playful approach of dance.
Artists
Mmakhotso Lamola
Zahraa Essa
Zakiyyah Haffejee
TK Mbadi
Collaborators
Morne van Staden, Greenframe Sets
Joseph Manyenga, Joseph the Tailor
Lighting Sponsor
Lights by Linea
Supported by Spier
This show marks the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa’s first foray into staging a cultural history exhibition. The exhibition engages the public life of Albie Sachs to narrate the intertwined artistic and political histories of two nations: Mozambique and South Africa. It recognises that revolution unfolds along a continuum, and it honours the many struggles for freedom that came before Sachs, and those still to come.
Exhibition Curators
Dr Phokeng Setai
Assisted by Rory Tsapayi and Amy Cornfield
Exhibition Design
Julia Kabat
Managing Editor
Buhle-Bethu Qatyana
Exhibition Visual Identity
Mmakhotso Lamola
Zakiyyah Haffejee
Zahraa Essa
Exhibition Timeline
Gaelen Pinnock
Exhibition Images
Michael Slater
24 July 2025 - 23 August 2026
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2026 Student Showcase
This exhibition showcased the work of the Clay Hands student community at 196 Victoria. Centred around a whimsical Mad Hatter’s dinner party, the exhibition transformed the gallery into a communal table where ceramic objects, vessels, and sculptural pieces became guests in an imagined gathering. Celebrating experimentation, craft, and the joy of making, the exhibition highlighted the diverse voices of the Clay Hands community while creating a space for conversation, curiosity, and collective storytelling.
Exhibition Design
Zakiyyah Haffejee
Collaborators
Clay Hands
Exhibited at Lumenocity Light Festival 2026
Come Dance With Us is a large-scale light installation originally commissioned for the Spier Light Art Festival and later exhibited at the Lumenocity Festival. Comprising a series of towering illuminated fabric figures, the work invites audiences into a collective act of movement, memory, and celebration.
Animated by air and light, the figures sway across the landscape, drawing on histories of women's labour, resilience, and care. The installation transforms remembrance into an act of radical joy, encouraging visitors to move alongside the figures and become participants in a shared choreography. Through light, movement, and collective participation, Come Dance With Us creates a space for connection, reflection, and celebration across contexts.
Artists
Zahraa Essa
Zakiyyah Haffejee
studio zaa
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instagram: studio__zaa
the studio is made up of two architects, artists, makers and researchers who are concerned with the spatial consequences of (and on) history, socio-politics and femme identities. These are the foundations of the studio; the driver of these ideas and themes is carried out through joyful, playful and intimate mediums.
zakiyyah haffejee is an architect and interdisciplinary designer; her work draws on themes of gender, identity and spirituality, often focusing on rituals and uncovering meaning through language, history and religion.
zahraa essa is an architect and researcher who is fascinated with human intuition and resilience, how material cultures unfold between people and their social environment, particularly in the city where the landscape and lifestyle are transforming into ‘hybrid cultures’ as a result of capitalism and modernisation.
2026
clay hands student showcase
2026
come dance with us
lumenocity
2025
come dance with us
spier light art
2025
spring is rebeliious
zeits mocaa
(visual identity)
jafthas flower farm heritage museum