“My interest in wood was a passion I picked up… I was curious about what I naturally just found myself exploring,” says Dada Khanyisa.
At this year’s RMB Latitudes Art Fair, Dada presents a site-responsive installation within the turret at Shepstone Gardens in Johannesburg, transforming the space into an intimate yet layered environment.
The circular architecture becomes a narrative device, guiding viewers through a sequence of encounters – figures leaning, gathering, pausing – each moment suspended somewhere between observation and memory.
Dada was awarded the FNB Art Prize in 2022, adding to earlier accolades, including the Simon Gerson Prize in 2016.
Their work, which once travelled across South Africa on taxis as part of the SA Taxi Art Awards, now moves fluidly between local and international contexts, supported by residencies in Paris and Miami.
Born in Umzimkhulu in 1991 and now based in Cape Town, Dada’s foundation in animation continues to shape their visual language.
“I’m interested in how people relate… you can pick that up through body gestures, the body language,” they say. “That’s something I picked up from my training as an animator.”
It is precisely this sensitivity to movement and psychology that gives their work its quiet intensity – a sense that something is always unfolding just beneath the surface.
Dada’s practice sits deliberately between categories. Working across sculptural painting, collage, and low-relief wooden assemblage, they build scenes that feel at once constructed and organic.
“Most of it starts with the sketch… it helps me map out what it is I want to do next,” they explain.
At Latitudes, however, the focus is not on scale or spectacle, but on experience.
The turret installation invites a slower engagement – one that mirrors the artist’s own process of looking, noticing and assembling meaning.
“I’m interested in what goes on psychologically… socially… spiritually,” Dada reflects, “and then trying to negotiate it through gestures and forms.”
In this space, those negotiations become visible. Figures occupy the architecture as much as they occupy each other, creating a choreography of presence and absence.
It is less about what is shown, and more about what is felt – the subtle dynamics of proximity, tension and belonging.
