Simamkele Sitwebile
Chloe van der Merwe
Mandisa Ngqulana

MOCAA Art Club (M A C) is a BMW Centre for Arts Education programme for teenagers from the diverse localities of Cape Town. This year brought 16 members from Bonteheuwel, Delft, Khayelitsha, Philippi, Mitchel’s Plain and Nyanga to interact in an environment that promotes social cohesion. Using their collective zeal for art-making to engender criticality and visual literacy, members explored a myriad of contemporary artistic practices in a series of technical and conceptual workshops.

For five months, members gathered every second Saturday to participate in sessions intended to observe, reflect, discuss, make and write. The year’s theme, “identity in space”, served as a conceptual framework for examining personal experiences and how they intersect with a broader social and spatial context. In alignment with the BMW Centre for Art Education's objective to translate exhibitions into learning resources, they responded to the museum's permanent collections, SALA and Selections from the Collection; as well as Then I Knew I Was Good at Painting (at the Iziko South African National Gallery), and the biodiversity of the Cape Flats Nature Reserve.

Over the course of 14 sessions, M A C members were immersed in the works of Neo Matloga, Jody Paulsen, Zanele Muholi and Esther Mahlangu; where each project was facilitated as a responsive shift from the drawing processes members were accustomed to – towards explorative making and ideation. The members’ collaborative and individual artworks culminated into an exhibition, A Seat at the Table. This title reflects the programme’s intention to provide a platform to young people with access to professional art practices, where their voices are equally heard and valued. It’s an allegorical table, where each participant’s unique perspective contributes to a larger conversation about art, selfhood, and community.

Through their artworks, the teenagers used their own subjective view to make sense of the world around them, creating a range of works that resonate with the personal and collective experiences of the group. The four projects completed during these sessions are an indication of their engagement with museum culture, and their contribution to the ever-evolving dialogue about who has a seat at the table in the art world.