The Bag Factory is delighted to host the 2023 Cassirer Welz Award Recipient, Bulumko Mbete’s solo exhibition, entitled: I’ve known rivers.

In the past three months of her residency at the Bag Factory, Mbete has explored new ways of working with textiles by researching and trialling different techniques. In this exhibition, the artist establishes an expanding visual language as she makes a departure from her iconic blanket and bead soft sculptures, by presenting new experiments comprised of installation and textile-based artworks. Although aesthetically distinct from her previous oeuvre, the marrow of the thematics explored within her artistic practice are present and expanded upon in this exhibition. 

Mbete’s fascination with textiles is centered around being able to turn a material into something functional or an object of admiration. ‘I have always been inclined [towards textiles], I’m interested in abstractionism, not necessarily aesthetically, but in the [notion] that an idea can be contained within something that isn’t figurative or a symbol in the conventional sense.’

In I’ve known rivers, Mbete probes us to consider ‘challenging and reshaping our relationship with culturally specific textile materials from Southern Africa.’

This award has been made possible with the support of Strauss&Co. Fine Art Auctioneers and Business and Art South Africa.