Zenaéca Singh
AVA Exhibitions: As Natural As Daylight: Plants, Memory & The Edge of Belonging (Group Show) 20.11.25 - 24.01.26 & Portals Into Domestic Worlds (Duo Show) 25.04.24 - 06.06.24
Zenaéca Singh explores the sugar economy’s complex legacy in South Africa, investigating its connections to migration, colonialism, labour exploitation, and the gendered dynamics of the domestic sphere.
Working across painting, sculpture, and installation, Singh delves into archival materials, particularly focusing on the period of indentured South African Indians between 1860 and 1911. Her practice often begins with family photographs, transforming these personal mementos into powerful visual narratives that draw on themes of history, identity, and memory. These photographs are reimagined through vivid, tactile works made from molasses, sugar, and sugar paste, in varying states of crystallisation. The use of sugar as a medium becomes a symbolic reference to both an economic system built on exploitation and the sweet, domestic associations of sugar within family life.
Singh’s work thoughtfully traces the connections between the sugar economy and its effects on the domestic culture and gender roles of South African Indian communities. By focusing on domestic imagery, she highlights how the sugar industry shaped not only economic but also social and cultural practices. The artist’s engagement with these histories is personal, reflecting her own journey as she situates her identity within this broader historical context.
Currently completed a MFA at the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2024, where she also received multiple awards for her BFA, Singh is an Accelerated Transformation of the Academic Programme (ATAP) Fellow. Selected exhibitions include Greatest Hits at Leeuwenhof Slave Lodge Remembrance Gallery, in collaboration with the Association of Visual Arts (2023). Recent exhibitions include Entangled (2024 - ongoing) with Guns & Rain at Oxford Rhodes House, along with MFA solo exhibition, Browning the Archive (2024) at Michaelis Galleries and All Directions (2025) at Fenix Museum.
Instagram: @zenaeca
