More Than a Studio: Reflecting on Legacy in 35 Years of Artist Proof Studio

A Legacy in Printmaking

The final exhibition, one witnessed after the rigorous and often invisible labour of installation, arrived with a sense of weight. Throughout the process of bringing 35 Years of Artist Proof Studio: A Legacy in Printmaking into being, conversations with the Artist Proof Studio (APS) team repeatedly returned to the same sentiment: “This is overwhelming.” The team kept saying, “That feeling is understandable and valid.” Yet, at the encounter of the completed exhibition, the feeling shifted. The weight was no longer only found in the scale of the exhibition, the number of artists represented, or the decades of history contained within the gallery space. Instead, it emerged through the realisation of what it means to hold and present 35 years of commitment, sacrifice, artistic labour, and belief in the possibilities of a different South Africa.

As the exhibition unfolds, it prompts a difficult but necessary reflection: what does it mean to engage with the legacy of an institution founded during a period when many imagined a democratic South Africa built on principles of equality, access, and freedom; ideals that continue to shape cultural institutions today, while many young people experience growing uncertainty, exclusion, and disillusionment? These tensions sit at the centre of 35 Years of Artist Proof Studio: A Legacy in Printmaking. The exhibition is not simply an institutional celebration; it is a reflection on the conditions that allow artistic communities to form, survive, and continue imagining futures.

Founded in 1991 during South Africa’s period of political transition, APS emerged at a moment of significant social transformation. Established by Kim Berman and the late Nhlanhla Xaba, the organisation was built around principles of access, artistic development, mentorship, and creating opportunities for artists to develop technical skills while building independent creative practices. This context is important because it reminds us that APS represents more than a printmaking studio. It represents a model of arts education grounded in exchange, collaboration, and community. The exhibition therefore asks viewers to consider not only what an institution produces, but what it enables.

Presented through a collaboration between Artist Proof Studio and KZNSA Gallery, following its earlier presentation at Strauss & Co in Johannesburg, the exhibition brings together works by APS alumni across generations. Through this gathering of artists, the exhibition creates a dialogue between past and present, revealing how the institution has supported practitioners, educators, and collaborators who continue to shape South Africa’s cultural landscape. The legacy of APS is not only visible through the individual achievements of artists who have emerged from the studio, but through the networks of knowledge that have been created through years of teaching, making, and sharing.

Entering the main gallery space, the viewer first encounters the founders of APS, Kim Berman and Nhlanhla Xaba. This curatorial decision is significant because it establishes APS as both an artistic and social project. The exhibition begins by foregrounding the values that shaped the institution: imagination, community, access, and the belief that art can operate as a tool for connection and transformation. In between the works by Birman and Xaba, a moving image video presents APS’s history. The film becomes an important moment of transition, allowing viewers to travel through the institution’s journey before engaging with the artworks themselves. Rather than functioning only as historical documentation, it encourages deeper reflection on the works that follow and the histories embedded within them.

The exhibition then moves into a timeline mapping key moments in APS’s development. Accompanied by some faces of selected alumni, the timeline functions as both archive and testimony. The inclusion of artists such as Nelson Makamo, Philemon Hlongwane, Colbert Mashile, and others as part of the APS alumni demonstrates the significant role APS has played within South Africa’s contemporary art landscape. However, the importance of the timeline is not only in recognising individual success. It reveals the wider ecosystem that allows artists to emerge. APS is presented as a living archive – one shaped by generations of artists, educators, mentors, and communities.

One of the exhibition’s strongest curatorial decisions is its refusal to separate institutional history from artistic production. The archival material, historical timeline, and artworks exist in conversation, allowing APS to be understood as a constantly evolving space rather than a fixed institution. This becomes especially meaningful when considering the relationship between printmaking and social history. Printmaking has long been connected to accessibility, circulation, and political communication. Within South Africa, the medium has played an important role in documenting resistance, questioning power, and representing lived realities. The works within the exhibition continue this tradition while expanding beyond direct political commentary. They explore identity, belonging, domestic life, memory, labour, and personal experience, demonstrating the continued ability of printmaking to hold complex and layered narratives.

A particularly powerful section of the exhibition is the inclusion of works that survived the APS fire that happened in 2003. These damaged works operate as more than historical remnants. They become symbols of resilience, reflecting the vulnerability and endurance of artistic communities themselves. Their presence transforms loss into a meditation on survival and continuity. At its strongest, the exhibition reveals APS as an ecosystem rather than simply an educational institution. It is a space where artists develop technical abilities, but also where confidence, critical thinking, and artistic voices are cultivated.

This is where the role of arts education becomes particularly significant. In contemporary South Africa, where emerging artists continue to face challenges around access, funding, institutional support, and the sustainability of creative practices, spaces such as APS remain essential. Arts education is not only about developing artistic skill it also creates environments where artists can question, experiment, imagine, and respond to the realities around them. At a time when artistic freedom is increasingly shaped by economic pressures and limited opportunities, institutions that support independent creative thinking become important sites of resistance and possibility.

The artists presented in the exhibition demonstrate the diverse ways APS has enabled such practices to develop. Philip Mabote’s relationship with lino printing reveals the medium as both a technical process and personal language. His approach highlights the meditative qualities of printmaking, where the physical act of carving becomes connected to reflection, patience, and self-understanding. Similarly, Lehlogonolo Mashaba Masoabi work expands contemporary conversations around print through explorations of science, technology, anatomy, architecture, and the relationship between human and mechanical systems. His hybrid forms reflect contemporary anxieties around identity and transformation in an increasingly technological world. Other artists such as Tshegofatso Nkhumeleng and Nkosana Nhlapo engage with everyday experiences as important sites of artistic inquiry. Through explorations of domestic spaces, family, care, and identity, these works demonstrate how personal histories can become broader reflections on society. Perhaps APS’s most enduring contribution is how they have created conditions where artists are able to transform lived experiences into meaningful artistic expressions.

However, the scale and ambition of the exhibition also create challenges. Representing 35 years of institutional history and numerous artistic practices is a complex undertaking. At times, the breadth of the exhibition risks moving quickly across individual artists, with some practices becoming absorbed into the larger narrative of APS’s success. This tension raises an important question: is the exhibition ultimately about the artists, or about the institution that supported them? This makes me wonder if the strength of the exhibition lies precisely in this unresolved relationship? APS has always existed between these two positions , as a space for individual artistic development and as a collective social project. The exhibition reflects this duality. Ultimately, then 35 Years of Artist Proof Studio: A Legacy in Printmaking is not simply a retrospective. It is an examination of what institutions make possible.

The exhibition reminds us that artistic legacies are not fixed achievements preserved in history. They are living processes sustained through mentorship, education, collaboration, and exchange. APS’s greatest legacy is therefore not only the artworks produced within its walls, but the futures it has enabled artists to imagine. At a moment when many young artists are questioning access, belonging, and sustainability within the cultural sector, the exhibition offers both celebration and critical reflection. It asks what it means to build and maintain spaces where creativity, knowledge, and artistic freedom can continue to exist. More than a studio, APS emerges through this exhibition as a community, an archive, and an ongoing conversation about the role of art and arts education in shaping collective futures.

By Azola Krweqe for KZNSA Gallery

June, 2026