Southern Guild at Expo Chicago 2025 articulates narratives of resistance

Southern Guild returned to Expo Chicago for the third year running with a curated selection of new works by leading contemporary artists from across the continent of Africa, including Zanele Muholi, Zizipho Poswa, Kamyar Bineshtarigh, Mmangaliso Nzuza,  Manyaku Mashilo, Ayotunde Ojo, Roméo Mivekannin, Ange Dakouo Bonolo Kavula, Ange Dakouo and Lulama Wolf.

Spanning traditional and non-traditional media, the presentation, which was on view from April 24 – 27, 2025, at the Festival Hall, Navy Pier, Chicago Booth 232 in Illinois, Chicago, the US, foregrounded practices that "[spoke] back to Western modes of art-making by articulating narratives of resistance and inclusive representation," as Southern Guild relays in the show's press release. Bineshtarigh, Kavula and Dakouo use labour-intensive techniques—mark-making, threading, weaving, wrapping—to reclaim memory, language and materiality through abstract modes. Muholi, Poswa, Nzuza, Ojo, Wolf and Mivekannin reclaim agency through personal and community representation, giving vivid figurative form to lesser-seen subjects, symbols and spaces.

"Since our debut presentation at Expo Chicago in 2023, our presence in the US has expanded substantially. Our new gallery in Los Angeles, opened in February 2024, has served as a springboard for establishing connections with artists in the States and the diaspora at large, spotlighting our artists' work in seven solo exhibitions and four group shows, and facilitating important residencies and museum engagements on the West Coast. We have also broadened our participation in US fairs to add San Francisco, Los Angeles and Aspen to our outings in Chicago, New York and Miami," says Trevyn McGowan, co-founder of Southern Guild.

At Expo Chicago 2025, Muholi (South Africa) presented a lightbox and photographic print from their acclaimed series Somnyama Ngonyama (Hail the Dark Lioness), a growing collection of black-and-white, 'impromptu and nomadic' self-portraits, in which the artist and visual activist inhabits shifting archetypes and personas. Using everyday objects in unexpected ways, the work subverts traditional portraiture to address the historical invisibility of Black women and non-binary bodies in Western art before the 20th century.

Poswa (South Africa) showcased two ceramic and bronze sculptural art pieces: a new work from her uBuhle boKhokho series, inspired by the elaborate art of African hairstyling, and a horned piece from her iLobola series, which honours the traditional African custom of bride-wealth. Drawing on the matriarchal and spiritual traditions of her Xhosa heritage and culture, Poswa merges figuration and abstraction into anthropomorphic totems "characterised by an elliptical approach to form, textural application of glaze and striking pattern," according to the contemporary art gallery based in Cape Town and Los Angeles.

Nzuza (South Africa) presented a series of large-scale, figurative oil paintings at the art exhibition depicting weighted sculptural subjects immersed in expansive natural settings—wheat fields, lakes, rolling hills—serving as metaphors for ritual, healing and transformation. His compositions use impasto paint and patchwork planes of movement and light to portray figures that "exude a particular sculptural sensibility, with the body being utilised as an instrument to explore possibilities of composition and angular form," the press release mentions.

Ojo (Nigeria) contributes a new painting centred on rest, memory and domestic intimacy, featuring a reclining figure rendered in oil, acrylic and charcoal. His layered process uses delicate graphite lines and thin washes of paint to build atmospheric depth. "He is interested in the idea of rest and introspection, particularly as a respite from the chaos and intensity of everyday life in Lagos," they continue.

At the contemporary art fair, Bineshtarigh (South Africa/ Iran) exhibited a monochrome triptych that continues his exploration of 'the intermeshed relationship between language, mark-making and political mobilisation' through repeated brushstrokes in printing ink. The rhythmic gestures in the contemporary art piece evoke protest and communal energy, "part of a larger series whose power coalesces from the repetition—and interruption—of a singular, curvilinear brushstroke. The rhythm builds upon itself in an effort to be heard, speaking to rebellion, a communal shedding, a movement of multitudes rising in protest," the press release states.

At Expo Chicago 2025, Dakouo (Ivory Coast/ Mali) presented an abstract tapestry composed of 'woven gris-gris'—protective amulets crafted from folded newspaper and cotton thread, forming geometric wall panels. The use of printed material honours his father, a printer, while referencing spiritual protection practices from Mali. "Dakouo creates gradient effects by varying the density of ink on the selected paper, using colour as a symbolic, disruptive or narrative device. In the Vodún religion, gris-gris are believed to protect the wearer from evil or bad luck, a practice Dakouo learned about from Mali's Donso hunters, a brotherhood that strives to protect the ancestral memories and spiritual knowledge of their community," they elaborate.

Mashilo's (South Africa) large diptych conjured a speculative cosmology rooted in Sepedi traditions and matriarchal knowledge at the art event. Her layered compositions reference the application of letsoku, red ochre mixed with clay and animal fat, "smeared on young women's bodies as they come of age… Mashilo builds speculative worlds that materialise ancestral knowledge systems inhabited by female figures expansively take up space," as the release explains.

With a practice that pivots on the re-appropriation of historical artworks that have left their mark on him, Mivekannin (Ivory Coast/ Benin/ France) exhibits Bouguereau (The Myth of Orestes), a large-scale painting reimagining the mythological drama with the artist inserting himself into a 19th-century composition by William Bouguereau. According to the release, "He depicts his own visage in the figure of Orestes as he is pursued by the three furies sent to dispense justice for his murder of his mother. Foregrounding himself in the dramatic cycle of murder and revenge, he thwarts the duality of perpetrator and victim, choosing to reflect on the rage and culpability in all of us."

The new wall piece by Kavula (South Africa) comprises a mesh of stitched fabric discs cut from traditional shweshwe cloth, a material linked to her mother's dress, now a family heirloom. "Stitched together at mathematically precise intervals, her near-translucent fabric grids are embedded with collective histories of culture and ancestry. The process is that of excessive repetition, each dot with its own landscape of minutiae, telling of the meditative action of labour and of the creation of new meaning through deconstruction and transformation," the release states.

Meanwhile, Wolf's (South Africa) two-panel painting explored the connection between humans and the earth through expressive, minimal forms and sand-infused paint. Merging African spirituality with a contemporary context with colour theory influenced by South African vernacular architecture and indigenous rock art, she uses smearing and scraping techniques that reference pre-colonial African traditions in her art.