Exhibitions NOW SHOWING
Temporary Exhibitions
Rebirth of Africa, by Mihle Sopam
on until 14 March 2026
This exhibition is an immersive audiovisual Augmented Reality experience set within the Spirit World room at Origins Centre. The exhibition is an immersive Afro-futurist exhibition set in the year 2136, where the entirety of Earth has become a technological wasteland. Within this landscape, a technological deity named KunTalu awakens and becomes visible through augmented reality.
Mihle Sopam is a scholar and creator of art. She is currently completing her Masters degree in Digital Arts at Wits. To fully engage with the work, please bring a smartphone with a camera, earphones or headphones for an enhanced audio experience.
It is noon and the sunbeam is late, by Lily van Rensburg
on until 14 March 2026
This exhibition explores the preservation, display, and contestation of colonial and apartheid-era artworks and monuments in contemporary South Africa. Through interventions into the ideological and material legacies of Afrikaner nationalism at the Voortrekker Monument, it employs curatorial practice to unsettle the commemorative authority of the Monument’s archive and propose alternative modes of engagement.
Lily van Rensburg is a curator, artistic researcher, and cultural producer. She is currently pursuing her Master of Arts in Contemporary Curatorial Practice at Wits as a Mandela Rhodes scholar.
Facing the Heat in South Africa, by Prof Vishwas Satgar
5 March - 6 May 2026
This photographic exhibition present images taken by Prof Vishwas Satgar, taken over a ten-year period, highlight climate extreme impacts at 1C overshoot at a planetary level. This confirms we are living in a post normal world. The photographs provide forensic evidence about how humans and more than human life are suffering climate injustice. Moreover, the crisis of uncaring leadership is also reflected in the continuity of South Africa’s carbon addiction. We have to end the carbon ‘lock in’ in the economy and in our everyday lives. Climate justice, as an ethics of care for all planetary life and a transformative political project, provides a way forward to address the legacies of apartheid, rapidly phase out fossil fuels and ensure a just, livable and democratic future for all, if we act now.
RSVP: iman.benjamin@wits.ac.za
Imagine Visionary Animals, by Erla Haraldsdottir
17 October 2025 – 14 March 2026
The Origins Centre is excited to present a site-responsive temporary exhibition with Berlin and Johannesburg-based Icelandic artist Erla S. Haraldsdóttir. The exhibition is on the one hand informed by the hues of materials composing the physical exhibition space of the new wing, and on the other hand underscoring the museum’s core themes – cave paintings and rock engravings. This body of work departs from cave formations. By balancing photorealist and symbolic realism Haraldsdóttir returns to her longstanding investigations into how images can serve as portals – connecting cultural symbols, archetypes, and lived experience across time and place. Through this distinct form of ocular magical realism, the exhibition acknowledges stone surfaces as humankind’s original canvas through an interplay of colour, transparency, light, reflection, and spatial perception. Curated by Jonatan Habib Engqvist. Supported by The Icelandic Visual Arts Council, Erla S. Haraldsdóttir is a multidisciplinary visual artist whose work investigates the boundaries between personal memory, ancestral narrative, and collective myth. Using painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage, Haraldsdóttir draws on diverse visual languages, combining elements of figurative painting with experimental processes, often shaped by site, context, or archival material. Her practice frequently explores the transformative potential of colour and light, and the interplay between materiality and storytelling.
Enquiries: tammy.hodgskiss@wits.ac.za
Tickets on webtickets (R30/R40)
Permanent Exhibitions
The interactive exhibits at Origins Centre take visitors on an extraordinary journey of discovery, which begins with the origins of humankind in Africa and then moves through the development of technology, art, culture, and symbolism. The journey continues with an exploration of the diverse Southern African rock art traditions. These ancient masterworks, and the artists, are illustrated through contemporary art installations by well-known South African artists.
Our permanent exhibitions:
- Indigenous Gardens – edible and medicinal plants from different biomes that were used in the past and currently by ritual specialists throughout southern Africa.
- African Origins - Early African stone tools from 2.6 million years ago; the origins of humanity in Africa and what makes us human; The sands of time across the world; replica hominin skulls showing our human evolution over the last 7 million years
- The San and Rock Art - San and their Hunter-Gatherer past; San genocide and Sara Baartman; The eland in San belief; San painting technologies; The trance dance and how San ritual specialists enter the spirit world; rain making and neuropsychology; Interpreting a rock art panel.
- Rock Engraving Archive - Varied engraved rock art traditions & styles in Southern Africa. Can be explored through augmented reality (Download the app on Android or IOS – originscentrear)
- Conservation - Conservation problems facing rock art sites today and site etiquette
- Tapestry Room – Understanding and interpreting San Art; The history of the San told through 11 embroidered panels; The ‘White Lady of the Brandberg’
- Khoe Art - The geometric art found in southern Africa; Who are the Khoekhoen?
- Early (Iron Age) Farmers - The rise of complex societies, including information on Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe; Protest art of the Makgabeng
- Installations by contemporary artists – One Being by Deborah Glencross; World Map by Walter Oltman; Axis Mundi by Russel Scott; Synanthrope by Hannelie Coetzee; Signs of people by Willem Boshoff; Threads of knowing by Tamar Mason; Double Vision by Pippa Scotness & Malcolm Payne; Glass Beads by Martli Jansen van Rensburg.