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After almost a year in residence at the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios, Swaline Mkhonto and Zovuyo Pendu will present Site Forming: where encounter takes form, a dual exhibition opening on Saturday 10 October 2026. They are the 2025/2026 recipients of the Young Womxn Studio Bursary award founded and funded by artist and Bag Factory alum Sam Nhlengethwa. The award grants 12 months of studio space to two early career womxn artists.

At the beginning of their residency, Mkhonto mused that “looking within the personal and looking within the external and the physicality of geology [...] is going to be quite interesting working in relation to each other.” Their forthcoming exhibition reflects the outcomes of the ongoing encounter between the two artists.

In Site Forming, Mkhonto and Pendu bring their contemplations of physical and metaphysical place into conversation. While they share an interest in the duality of the fixed and fluid states of matter, their interpretations take discrete forms. For Mkhonto inspiration arises from the seminal novel by Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions as well as Makhololo in Eswatini. Notions of dreaming, weather, sight/site and memory are translated into an installation involving her signature printed silks alongside sculpture, video, text and collaborative research. On the other hand, Pendu interrogates how one’s psyche navigates seemingly opposing notions of self. Her large scale paintings take her query beyond the contradictory nature of binary thinking to open up space for new possibilities to emerge.