When Art and Politics Converse

Amongst the extensive collection of booths at the 2025 edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair, there sat a box, built from six frames of canvas, with a slit at its top: a ballot box. 2024 and 2025 held a remarkably high number of national elections across nations around the world. 2025 was also the year when artHARARE hosted its own ‘Artist General Election’: artists were positioned as electoral candidates, and visitors actively participated in the gallery’s reimagining of the democratic process. After a process of physical and online voting over the fair weekend, the booth’s ‘election’ resulted in a significant acquisition by former South African Member of Parliament, Marcel Golding.

 

Acknowledging the long-standing relationship between art and politics is certainly not a new idea. The two worlds continuously interact with each other, as methods to respond to social issues of each and every historical and contemporary moment. Sometimes these two worlds can merge in a logical synthesis, while other times, they contrast in productive and meaningful ways. At the 2025 edition of Investec Cape Town Art Fair, art and politics simultaneously activated an important conversation to playfully consider people’s choices, the realities of today’s global geopolitics, and the roles of artists within political discussions.

 

 

artHARARE’s election was watched over by a collection of fine art election posters on display, which were made specially for the booth. Beside them, there was also a mural of posters pasted on the booth’s wall, which played with the slogans, visual languages and names that are often instantly associated with a particular party or politician. The mural’s posters creatively blurred the role between artist and electoral candidate, and offered a space to think differently about them. For example, one might have easily recognised the politically ubiquitous term ‘Labour’ on a poster, and upon further inspection read that the poster calls for a “New Deal for the Working Artist”.

 

Founder of artHARARE, Richard Mudariki, reflected on this attempt to rethink agency and choice in political processes, and more so, to consider exciting new directions to assess this relationship between art and politics, artist and politician: “For myself as an artist, I always keep an eye on what’s happening politically, and I always feel it affects a lot of our daily lives. As artists, we always respond to our environments.”

 

After encountering the widespread nature of political posters placed upon streetlamps, billboards and walls in Cape Town during South Africa’s 2024 national elections, Richard was struck by the visual expression of political views that come into the public landscape during these periods. Whether it be the ideology of a candidate vying for support, or a creative reaction towards it, Richard reminisced on a particular incident where he saw a poster that had a clown’s nose drawn onto a particular candidate’s portrait. There lay material for a complex discourse, between the seats of parliament and the streets of Cape Town.

 

 

Interestingly, the collector, and former South African Member of Parliament and Trade Unionist, Marcel Golding’s relationship with art originated with some strong ties to political posters too. While still operating as a trade unionist, Marcel collected an extensive variety of posters, which were a medium deeply ingrained in the advertising, operations, and calls to actions of these unions. At the time, it was also the easiest and most cost-effective way to place artwork on his walls. Sometimes picked up and gathered, other times purchased, Marcel’s history with political posters is a long-standing one, and it is rather fitting to see his interaction with them in this contemporary moment.

 

At the 2025 fair, Marcel Golding cast his vote at the artHARARE elections, and later acquired one of each of the posters that were exhibited at the booth. The fine art election posters, printed on archival paper, were by artists Nandipha Mntambo (Swaziland), the Animal Farm initiative, Wilfred Timire (Zimbabwe), Collin Sekajugo (Uganda), Samurai Farai (South Africa), Siwa Mgoboza (South Africa), Moffat Takadiwa (Zimbabwe), Lin Barrie (Zimbabwe), and Richard Mudariki (Zimbabwe). The works are due to be exhibited at the entrance of the higher education institution, Cornerstone College, where they will be highly visible to have the most impact on students passing through the college’s corridors.

 

Marcel reflected on the significance of placing these posters in a space of learning: “I felt that the pictures on those walls would be a good point of reference for students who come to the university… I thought that it would interest them. The purpose of education is not just to study, but to act and change the world, to make it a better place. Maybe these posters can invite and encourage them to see education as an instrument for change.”

 

 

Richard Mudariki is no stranger to creatively engaging with political challenges. Having developed as an artist during political upheaval in his home country, Zimbabwe, in 2007 and 2008, Richard’s artistic environment was informed by intense politics, which affected every aspect of life: the home, educational spaces, and how people could move and migrate. He integrated it into his work, and consequently, he has always gravitated towards a role as a political observer, as well as a creative practitioner. This is evident in a variety of artHARARE’s creative projects, like ‘Art World Passport’: a document designed to mimic a passport, which is a living archive for experiences of moving through different art spaces around the world. As both an artwork and an archive, the passport encourages participation and active engagement to challenge the notions of immigration and movement — ideas central in many political conversations in our contemporary moment. ‘Art World Passports’ recognise their owners as members of the art world, beyond merely their statehood.

 

At Investec Cape Town Art Fair’s 2025 edition, booths were guided by the fair’s curatorial concept, PLAY. The ‘Artist General Elections’ embodied this theme through a creative consideration of autonomy and agency for viewers as participants. As Richard shared, “There are different kinds of politics. State politics, but there is also identity politics, gender politics, business politics, even in relationships — the family has politics.”

 

As he aptly put it, “As long as you have people, you have politics.”

 

With special thanks to Richard Mudariki and Marcel Golding, who enthusiastically spoke to us about this remarkable story.