Home is where the art is

Contemporary art has a habit of making the ordinary look guilty of hiding something. A chair is never just a chair. A wall remembers. A floorboard becomes evidence. In the hands of Botswana-born artist Kelebogile Marope, domestic space becomes a rich and illuminating archive.

Marope has been named the 2026 FNB Art Prize winner, becoming the first artist from Botswana to receive the award. Now in its 16th year, the prize is one of FNB Art Joburg’s most significant artist-support initiatives and comes with a cash award as well as a solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2027.

Working across sculpture, drawing and mixed media, Marope examines memory, identity and the spaces people inhabit, using familiar materials and architectural details to consider how home accumulates meaning. The jury praised her for expanding the possibilities of contemporary African sculpture and, notably, for claiming a medium still often dominated by men.

There’s something appealingly unfussy about that premise. We spend much of our lives surrounded by objects we barely notice, yet they absorb the rituals of living: who sat where, who left, who returned, what was inherited, and what was discarded. Marope’s work asks us to look again and think about the usual in an unusual way.

Born in Ramotswa, she studied fine art at Rhodes University, completing a bachelor’s and master’s degree, and has since exhibited in Botswana and South Africa. Her selection also places Botswana’s contemporary art scene more firmly on a regional stage.

FNB Art Joburg director Mandla Sibeko describes her practice as transforming the everyday into something “profoundly resonant”, which gets to the heart of her appeal.

Art often arrives wrapped in grand theories and intimidating vocabulary. Marope starts somewhere smaller and, maybe more interesting: with the places we know best. In an uncanny way she shows us that home is always watching us.

• The 19th edition of FNB Art Joburg takes place from Friday, September 4, to Sunday, September 6, at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg