For decades, the Sasol New Signatures Visual Arts Competition has served as one of South Africa’s most important platforms for emerging artistic talent. Over the past fifteen years in particular, the competition’s winning works have offered a fascinating lens into the evolving concerns, identities and creative directions shaping contemporary South African art.
From deeply personal reflections on identity and memory to explorations of social justice, ecology and mental health, the competition has become both a mirror of society and a space for innovation. At the same time, the mediums used by winning artists reveal a remarkable evolution in artistic practice, documenting a shift from traditional techniques toward increasingly multidisciplinary, tactile and technology-driven forms of expression.
The winning works also tell a larger story, one of a generation of artists responding to a rapidly changing world while continually redefining what contemporary South African art can be.
Identity at the Centre of Contemporary Expression
One of the strongest threads connecting the competition’s winning works is the exploration of identity. While earlier works often focused on broader socio-political commentary, recent years have seen artists move toward more intimate, personal narratives that examine memory, belonging, family history and self.
The 2011 winner, Mohau Modisakeng, explored inner conflict through symbolic imagery, while the 2022 runner-up, Omolemo Rammile, honoured the sacrifices of single mothers through deeply personal storytelling.
Questions of gender, representation and cultural identity have also featured prominently throughout the competition’s history. In 2015, merit award winner Sethembile Msezane highlighted the role of black women within political and historical narratives, while 2017 overall winner Lebohang Kganye reimagined family archives and photographs to reconstruct personal and collective histories. These works demonstrate how contemporary South African artists are increasingly using art as a means of self-examination, reclaiming histories and challenging inherited narratives.
Art as a Reflection of Society
The competition has also consistently reflected the social and political realities of our time, becoming an unofficial visual archive of South Africa’s evolving national consciousness. The 2016 overall winner, Zyma Amien, addressed labour exploitation and psychological trauma within the garment industry, while numerous finalists and winners across the years have explored issues such as poverty, HIV/AIDS, gender-based violence and systemic inequality.
The 2019 overall winner, Patrick Rulore, reflected on human connection during periods of load shedding and uncertainty, while many of the artworks produced in 2021 captured the emotional and social aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than just documenting these issues, many artists used their work to challenge systems of power, question social structures, and create spaces for dialogue and healing.
Ecology, Place and Global Citizenship
Another noticeable shift over the last decade has been the move from locally focused stories to broader themes around global citizenship and environmental awareness. Artists increasingly engage with narratives of climate change, conservation, ecological fragility and the human relationship with the natural world. Landscape itself often becomes a carrier of memory and trauma.
The 2018 overall winner, Jessica Storm Kapp, explored traces of loss and history embedded within the landscape through objects recovered after the devastating Knysna fires. Other artists have turned to organic materials such as roots, earth, animal hide and natural fibres to investigate ancestry, displacement and humanity’s link with nature. Matthew Blackburn, merit award winner 2023, highlighted the ever-growing problem of pollution with his ultra-realistic painting showing a black plastic bag slowly engulfing a lush forest floor.
Exploring Trauma, Healing and the Human Condition
Many winning works have grappled with emotional vulnerability, mourning and psychological complexity, with themes of mortality, grief and healing recurring throughout the competition. These deeply introspective works reflect a broader shift in contemporary art toward personal testimony, emotional reflection and embodied experience.
The 2025 overall winner, Juandré van Eck, used his ceramic sculpture as a metaphor for the cycles of the mind and mental health, encouraging audiences to engage with the work beyond visual perception alone. Merit award winners Kgodisho Moloto (2019) and Andrea Walters (2022) both used their works to explore the personal trauma associated with gender-based violence.
The Rise of Ceramics and Tactile Materiality
Alongside thematic evolution, the competition’s winning works also reveal significant changes in medium and artistic process. The most striking trend in recent years has been the rise of ceramics as a major conceptual medium which has now become a vehicle for ambitious sculptural and conceptual practice.
Ceramic works took centre stage with overall wins in both 2023, with Nosiviwe Matikinca’s school shoes, and in 2025, with Juandré van Eck’s interactive ceramic vessel, while also featuring in the 2024 runner-up work by Tandabantu Matola. Judges noted how artists are pushing ceramics beyond functionality into highly expressive, symbolic and immersive forms.
At the same time, artists are embracing unconventional materials to ground their work in lived experience and memory. Plastic shopping bags, Sunlight soap, pot scourers, shredded snake skin, dried roots and sheep hide have all appeared in award-winning works. These tactile materials often carry layered social and cultural meanings, allowing artists to physically embed themes of domestic labour, environmental decay, trauma, ancestry and spirituality into the artwork itself.
The Multidisciplinary Future of South African Art
The competition also reflects the increasing overlap between traditional artmaking and digital innovation. The 2021 overall winner, Andrea du Plessis, combined oil painting with augmented reality and AI-generated sound, while other finalists have incorporated coding, webcams, animation and interactive technologies into immersive installations. Artists such as Nelmarie du Plessis, overall winner in 2015, alongside merit award recipients Megan Serfontein (2018) and Herman Pretorius (2022), demonstrate how emerging artists are increasingly blending physical and digital mediums to create layered, interactive experiences.
Earlier in the decade, film and animation played a dominant role, with several overall winners between 2015 and 2017 working primarily in video-based mediums. More recently, however, moving image has become integrated into larger multimedia environments rather than functioning as a standalone format.
Despite these technological shifts, traditional mediums remain highly relevant. Drawing, in particular, has seen a strong resurgence, with pencil works by 2018 runner-up Peter Mikael Campbell and 2022 Merit Award winner Malik Mani, as well as ballpoint pen works by Themba Mkhangeli, who was both 2023 runner-up and 2024 merit award recipient, amongst others appearing prominently in the top spots.
Textile-based practices have steadily evolved through embroidery, fabric collage and fibre-based installations. Notable works include Mondli Mbhele, winner 2022 and merit winner 2025, Vian Roos.
Rather than replacing traditional techniques, contemporary artists are increasingly layering mediums together, creating works that are simultaneously tactile, digital, sculptural and experiential.
A Competition That Captures the Spirit of Its Time
Looking across the winning works of the past fifteen years, the Sasol New Signatures Visual Arts Competition reveals far more than changing artistic trends. It captures a generation of artists wrestling with identity, history, inequality, environmental uncertainty and the complexities of being human in a rapidly shifting world.
At the same time, it showcases the extraordinary innovation emerging within South African contemporary art, where artists continue to experiment fearlessly with medium, material and technology.
From intimate personal narratives to expansive multimedia installations, the competition remains a powerful reflection of the conversations shaping contemporary society and a glimpse into the future of South African art.
