On August 8, 2025, the University of the Western Cape opened the exhibition “And I, a Newly Evolved Fish” at the Iyatsiba Lab, Centre for Humanities Research in Woodstock, Cape Town. Running until October 20, the exhibition formed part of the EU-funded RE-WIRING project and marked the beginning of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies.
The exhibition brought together 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.
More than a visual showcase, the exhibition presented water as both subject and method, encouraging visitors to consider how oceans can be frameworks for rethinking gender, sexuality, and power in relation to broader struggles for environmental and social justice.
Through diverse disciplines and mediums, the exhibition highlighted the erasure of raced and gendered bodies and knowledges from dominant narratives in art and public discourse. It raised urgent questions about representation, invisibility, and the potential of water to imagine feminist and decolonial futures.
“And I, a Newly Evolved Fish” was one of five exhibitions curated under the RE-WIRING project, which uses art and material culture to investigate structural gender inequalities across different contexts.
As part of RE-WIRING’s global framework, the Cape Town exhibition offered a deeply local yet globally resonant lens on the politics of water, identity, and belonging, underscoring the power of art to disrupt established logics and inspire new imaginaries for equality.
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