Zeitz MOCAA: Everything You Need to Know About this Iconic Art Gallery

The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (MOCAA) is one of Cape Town’s leading art galleries dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. Housed in the now-iconic Silo Building at the V&A Waterfront, the gallery boasts both a permanent exhibition and temporary, rotating exhibitions, all contributing to the preservation and promotion of African artists. Here’s what you need to know.

About Zeitz MOCAA

Zeitz MOCAA is a public, non-profit museum whose primary goal is to showcase and promote contemporary African art. The museum encourages intercultural understanding and resonance in its art selection and generally strives to foster an environment of free speech and support for human rights.

First opened in 2017, the iconic Grain Silo building at the V&A Waterfront was transformed into a functional silo space for the museum. Due to this, the museum space has an industrial feel, and is a truly unique gallery space in the context of Cape Town.

The Zeitz MOCAA is supported by the Global Council, an international group of art philanthropists, and the American Friends of Zeitz MOCAA, who aim to advance the awareness of African art in the United States.

Pan African Film Caravan

In collaboration with the Labia Theatre, Zeitz MOCAA screens important films by landmark African filmmakers on the last Friday of every month. Running until November, this event highlights narratives made about, by, and for Africans to raise awareness of sociopolitical issues and uplift visual storytellers across the continent.

After each screening, Zeitz MOCAA’s curatorial team hosts a communal conversation where attendees can raise questions, share their opinions, and continue the conversation sparked by the selected film. Each ticket fee is fully reinvested in the BMW Centre for Art Education, enabling children from underserved communities to access and participate in Zeitz’s holiday and community programmes, tours, and workshops.

The confirmed dates for the rest of the Caravan are: 31 July, 28 August, 25 September, and 30 October.

Cost: R30 per person | Zeitz members get in free. Book now on Webtickets.

When: 31 July | 6pm – 8pm
Where: The Labia Theatre, 68 Orange St, Gardens, Cape Town

MOCAA Art Club 2026

Grade 10 and 11 students with a keen interest in art can sign up to be part of this exclusive club, where 15 learners from across Cape Town spend three months of creative experimentation, collaboration, and real-world art experience. The programme kicks off with a relaxed meet-and-greet among students, followed by discussions and workshops every Saturday between August and October.

This year’s art club engages with We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, an exhibition by German-Ghanaian artist Zohra Opoku that explores forgotten family histories and self-discovery through art. Participants meet regularly to discuss the artworks and how their techniques and messaging can be used in their own work. In the other aspect of the programme, students meet at the BMW Centre for Art Education, where they experiment with materials and media, take part in critique sessions, and develop their own style.

The experience culminates in the MOCAA Art Club group exhibition, where each member’s work is professionally showcased at Zeitz MOCAA, Africa’s leading contemporary art museum. This includes an official opening event, where friends and family come to view each artwork and celebrate the occasion.

Applications for the MOCAA Art Club 2026 closed on Sunday, 3 May 2026.

Cost: Free. Click here for more information.

When: 1 August – 7 November 2026 (programme)

Current Exhibitions at Zeitz MOCAA

Zeitz MOCAA BMW Centre for Art Education

BMW Centre for Art Education Exhibition

Following the debut of three captivating new children’s titles as part of an ongoing book series, The Stories that Ran Away exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA brings these newest titles to life through original and digital artworks that celebrate and reclaim African myths, legends, and creation stories.

Brought to life by writer Meridian Berndt and a talented group of illustrators, these stories spark imagination while exploring our deep connection to the natural world, and our responsibility to protect it. On view until 7 June 2026, the museum’s tunnels transform into a magical world filled with extraordinary creatures and enchanting characters, inviting children to step into the stories themselves.

Adding to the magic, learners from Steenberg Primary School showcase their own imaginative creations, guided by educators from the BMW Centre for Art Education. For many, it’s their first hands-on art experience, turning inspiration into creativity and making the exhibition a powerful celebration of young voices and imagination.

Various Artists: Selections from the Collection

The Zeitz MOCAA Permanent Collection was established in 2015 and is focused on contemporary artistic practices from Africa and its global diaspora. It consists of over 500 objects, ranging from works on paper and canvas, photographic prints, sculptures, video works, installations and more.

Featuring artists from multiple countries, including South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Madagascar, the United States, Kenya, and Sudan, the collection is a rich testament to the diversity of contemporary practices from the continent and beyond.

A selection of the pieces in the permanent collection is on display at Zeitz MOCAA until 4 April 2027. The collection is thoroughly contemporary and addresses several relevant discourses in Africa and the world today, like migration, human rights, visibility, memory, and desire.

Zohra Opoku: We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight

We Proceed in the Footsteps of the Sunlight, the first museum survey exhibition of Ghanaian-German artist Zohra Opoku, traces a decade of quiet revolutions in cloth, memory, and self. The exhibition opened on 11 September 2025 and runs until 4 October 2026.

Born in Altdöbern (former GDR/East Germany), Opoku later relocated to Accra, Ghana, to reconnect with her ancestral roots. She now lives and works in Accra. Her multidisciplinary practice, deeply rooted in personal history and cultural heritage, explores the layered intersections of identity and memory, bridging cultures, geographies, and time.

Trained in fashion design and photography in Germany, Opoku extends her command of textiles into a layered visual language, moving fluidly between photography, printmaking, and textile-based installation. Fabric emerges as a generative medium through which questions of identity, memory, and ancestral lineage are thoughtfully explored. These themes unfold across the breadth of her practice, as she turns to printmaking, photography, and sculpture as complementary mediums for reflecting on selfhood and lived experience.

This survey maps the artist’s trajectory over the past decade through several major bodies of work, anchored by three recurring elements: Water — signalling the fluidity of practice and sanctification of daily rituals, as seen in After the prayer / before the prayer (2018); Breath — the life force that feeds the spirit, suspended between life and death, explored in The Myths of Eternal Life (2020–2024); Ground — the stabilising force of nature, a site of comfort, rootedness, identity, and familial belonging, depicted in Queen Mothers (2016), Unraveled Threads (2017) and Give Me Back My Black Dolls (2024–ongoing).

Spring Is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs

Spring Is Rebellious: The Art & Life of Albie Sachs is an exhibition that 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. The exhibition is open from 24 July 2025 until 23 August 2026.

Albie Sachs is a renowned South African activist, writer, and former judge on the Constitutional Court (1994–2009), appointed by Nelson Mandela after the country’s first democratic elections. As a young advocate, he defended those charged under apartheid laws before going into exile. He later taught law in Mozambique, where in 1988 he survived a car bomb attack by South African agents, and lost his right arm and vision in his left eye. A key figure in shaping South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitution, Sachs is the author of numerous books and continues to share lessons in justice, memory, and healing.

Rooted in the ideals of resistance, liberation, and transformation, the exhibition examines the trajectory of revolutionary struggle and questions the limits of its founding principles. It opens a window into the ongoing project of African political freedom and social justice, and uses Sachs’ life and collections as entry points to reflect on how art helps shape political and social life. The exhibition reflects on political transformation—a complex process both Mozambique (post-1975) and South Africa (post-1994) have faced—through the layered perspectives offered by the artworks.

Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode: A Protea is Not a Flower

A Protea Is Not a Flower is an exhibition with Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode responding to the life and works of Gerard Sekoto, Bessie Head and Don Mattera, and is open from 16 October 2025 until 15 November 2026.

A Protea Is Not a Flower is a multigenerational conversation between South African artists and writers whose lives and works contend with the complexity of the exilic experience. Contemporary visual artists Lerato Shadi and Robin Rhode respond to the lives and works of painter Gerard Sekoto and writers Bessie Head and Don Mattera, three important figures of the Black Modernist Intellectual Movement in twentieth-century South Africa.

Lerato Shadi is a South African artist currently living and working in Berlin, whose work interrogates assumed colonial narratives and critiques practices of historical erasure as mechanisms of violence against marginalised peoples. She challenges the politics of representing Black womanhood, centring her lived experience through repetitive bodily interventions.

Meanwhile, Robin Rhode is a multidisciplinary artist who currently lives and works in Berlin, whose work draws attention to the often unseen histories and social conditions of a site and its surroundings. Taking inspiration equally from youth street culture and art history, Rhode’s artistic practice treats the city wall as an expanded canvas.

Cauleen Smith: Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted

Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted is a survey exhibition by Los Angeles–based artist Cauleen Smith. Curated by Thato Mogotsi, the exhibition runs until 4 October 2026.

In her first major presentation on the African continent, Smith’s world-building projects come together in atmospheric installations that offer visitors a layered sensory experience. Short films and videos interact with drawings, sculpted objects, colourful textile banners and the sonic in an expansive exhibition that meditates on the artist’s ongoing concern with Black experimental cinema, Afrocentric aesthetics, Black feminism and the emancipatory uses of the utopic.

Smith’s decades-long practice merges her interests in jazz and literature, spirituality, feminism, Afrofuturism and what she calls ‘…the everyday possibilities of the imagination.’

Audio Tours at Zeitz MOCAA

The Zeitz MOCAA offers complimentary audio tours, accessible from your mobile device. Dedicated to showcasing art from Africa and its diaspora, the self-guided audio tours feature in-depth information about the museum’s exhibitions and architecture. This includes commentaries from leading artists, curators, architects, designers and art practitioners.

For those interested in the architecture of the space, the complimentary Architectural Tour gives visitors an insight into the industrial past of the Grain Silo building and its reformed architectural design by Thomas Heatherwick.

Please ensure that you bring your own earphones for the tour.