Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted

Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) presents Afflict the Comfortable, Comfort the Afflicted, a survey exhibition by Los Angeles–based artist Cauleen Smith. Curated by Thato Mogotsi, Curator of Contemporary Art at Zeitz MOCAA, the exhibition opens on Thursday, 20 November 2025, on Level 3 Silo Side, and runs until Sunday, 4 October 2026.

In her first major presentation on the African continent, Smith’s world-building projects come together in atmospheric installations that offer visitors a layered sensory experience. Short films and videos interact with drawings, sculpted objects, colourful textile banners and the sonic in an expansive exhibition that meditates on the artist’s ongoing concern with Black experimental cinema, Afrocentric aesthetics, Black feminism and the emancipatory uses of the utopic. Smith’s decades-long practice merges her interests in jazz and literature, spirituality, feminism, Afrofuturism and what she calls ‘…the everyday possibilities of the imagination.’