EXHIBITION MAFOLOFOLO
by MADEYOULOOK
Curated by Margarida Mendes
Opening: February 26th at 6 PM
Talk with the artists on February 26th at 5 PM
On display until May 23rd, 2026
Open Wednesday to Saturday from 3 PM to 7 PM
The exhibition “Mafolofolo”, by the collective MADEYOULOOK (Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho) from South Africa, curated by Margarida Mendes, opens on February 26th at Hangar – Artistic Research Centre
“Mafolofolo” is a sound installation that emerges from seven years of research in the northern part of South Africa. The collective has sought to understand the multiple cycles of loss and subsequent cycles of return related to the land, concerned with the deep and enduring relationships with the land that remain, despite the longue durée of South Africa’s turbulent and destabilizing existence. They narrate the particular history of this place and its the potential to seek intimacy, spiritual security, and interdependence with the land and more-than-human life. Through it, they encounter a trajectory of repair for the lands from which they find sustenance.
“Mafolofolo” offers strategies for recovery, through the historical tracking in the sound installation that references popular African resistance songs for liberation, particularly of the land, against the oppression. It traces a history of violence, racism, extraction, and ongoing dispossession with very real contemporary urgencies, while offering an opportunity for different imaginaries of relation with the land.
MADEYOULOOK collective has exhibited, published, and organized programs in various contexts, including the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024. The installation “Mafolofolo” exhibited at Hangar is an iteration of a commission from documenta fifteen, curated by ruangrupa.
MADEYOULOOK is a Johannesburg based interdisciplinary artist collaborative between Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho. The works of MADEYOULOOK take as their point of departure everyday black practices that have either been historically overlooked or deemed inconsequential. These works encourage a re-observation of and de-familiarisation with the everyday of urban South African life.
In reworking and interrupting how we view ordinary black lived-experiences and the everyday, we are ‘made to re-look’ and question societal relations. Since 2009, the works of MADEYOULOOK have considered subjects such as models of memorialisation of histories and oral traditions, black love and urban public space, forms and hierarchies of knowledge creation and dissemination, and the socialities of land and relationships with plant life.
MADEYOULOOK engages different approaches focused primarily on intertextual installations, gatherings, discursive programmes, research and publishing. Although MADEYOULOOK’s practice is significantly directed towards a practice of socialities and relationalities outside of the gallery space, these projects occasionally culminate in exhibitions.
MADEYOULOOK has exhibited, published and hosted programmes in various forms, including as sole representative artists of the South African Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, lumbung artists at documenta fifteen, with Njelele, Zimbabwe, Frac Pays de la Loire, France and KAdE, Netherlands, Primary, UK and various initiatives in South Africa. They were 2022 Fellows of the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. They have also been nominated for the Vera List Centre Prize for Art and Politics at the New School, NY in 2017 and the MTN New Contemporaries prize in 2012.
Margarida Mendes is a research-based artist, curator, and educator, exploring the overlap between critical ecology, experimental film, sound practices, and ecopedagogy. She creates transdisciplinary forums, exhibitions, discoursive events, and experiential works where alternative modes of education and sensing practices may catalyse political imagination and restorative action.
Margarida Mendes was part of the curatorial team of the 11th Gwangju Biennale; 4th Istanbul Design Biennial; 11th Liverpool Biennale; and 3rd Porto Design Biennale, and has founded and co-directed several educational platforms, such as escuelita at CA2M-Madrid; Matter in Flux ecological study group; and The Barber Shop project space dedicated to transdisciplinary research in Lisbon. She was a founding member of Laboratório da Torre, an independent film lab dedicated to analogue cinema made by artists in Porto; and took part in various artistic collectives, such as the online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting Inhabitants-tv.org; and Natural Contract Lab, a collective working on restorative justice and river rights across Europe.
Margarida Mendes holds a PhD by the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London, and is a tutor at the GEO-Design Masters at Design Academy Eindhoven and an affiliated researcher at ICNOVA, University of Lisbon. At Hangar Magarida Mendes programmes the artistic research laboratory ‘On the Wolf’s Trail’ (2023-2026), and has curated the exhibition ‘A Sphere Of Water Orbiting A Star’ by The Otolith Group (2023).