On August 8, 2025, the University of the Western Cape will inaugurate the thought-provoking exhibition And I, a Newly Evolved Fish at the Iyatsiba Lab, Centre for Humanities Research in Woodstock, Cape Town. Running until October 20, this exhibition is part of the RE-WIRING project.
Curated to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies, the exhibition highlights contemporary and archival works from Southern Africa that engage with oceans, bodies of water, and beaches to challenge entrenched binaries related to gender, race, coloniality, capitalism, and the Anthropocene.
Far more than a visual showcase, the exhibition presents water as both subject and method—inviting audiences to consider how oceans can serve as frameworks for rethinking gender, sexuality, and power in relation to broader environmental and social justice struggles.
Drawing from a variety of disciplines and mediums, the exhibition surfaces the erasure of raced and gendered bodies and knowledges from dominant narratives in art and public discourse. It asks urgent questions about who is represented, who is made invisible, and how water might offer new imaginaries for feminist and decolonial futures.
And I, a Newly Evolved Fish is one of five exhibitions curated under the RE-WIRING project, which uses art and material culture as a means of investigating structural gender inequalities across contexts.
The exhibition opening will be preceded by a seminar (10:00–16:30) and followed by the official opening at 16:30. Attendance is open to the public by RSVP via this link.
As part of RE-WIRING’s global framework, the exhibition offers a deeply local and globally resonant lens through which to examine the politics of water, identity, and belonging.
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