Few events in the visual and performing arts industry impact the culture, history, studies, creative sensibilities and communality as the recently concluded 2026 SA Visual Arts Historians (Savah) conference.
The gathering was hosted by the Rhodes University fine art department and the National Research Foundation (NRF) SARChI Chair programme in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa.
To those who are not academics or part of the visual and preforming arts industry, the conference might seem abstract.
But its import resonates with the South African and global south's creative intellectualism, economies, policies and influence and in the documentation of our cultural and historical archives.
Makhanda, which is off the beaten path but is the host community of Rhodes University, did not disappoint.
In her opening remarks, Rhodes fine arts professor Ruth Simbao said: “In a ferociously capitalist world where commercial galleries exist where the money and tourists are, we, in Makhanda, are outside this flurry of activity.
"People flock to Cape Town and Johannesburg for art and make links between these art centres with bigger art centres across the world — New York, Venice, Hong Kong, Paris, London, Sharjah and so on.”
Yet, for this prestigious and industry-shifting event, Makhanda was the chosen city.
If history and current events are anything to go by, one should not underestimate Makhanda’s inherent power in hosting global and national arts events.
The tug-and-pull of such events positively affects host communities in many areas, especially the local economy, tourism and commerce.
The 39th annual Savah conference was themed "Reaching Sideways, Creating Our Ways".
It emphasised collaborative approaches, transgressive and transformative pedagogies, as well as intra-Africa and south-south engagements and tie-ups.
This conference brought delegates, astute industry voices and attendees from across the world, particularly the African diaspora, to Makhanda, consolidating the efforts of the National Research Foundation Chair in the Arts of Africa, which stresses the slow, meaningful work on the ground that is being done by scholars and artists in specific African contexts.
Community cohesion is absolutely needed in these times of massive propaganda and upheavals of Afrophobia and xenophobia in SA, and the gathering highlighted the need for the unification of races and ethnicity beyond borders in pursuit of common goals.
Perhaps the convergence of international and local scholars, artists and other attendees with the local populace will help to contest the paradigm that SA is a xenophobic country.
Simbao told the attendees that the “efforts to be in Makhanda mean something important in our resistance to the fast-paced and often superficial, money-driven trends of the commercial art world that propel the work of certain artists one day, consuming artists in extractivist ways, only to drop them tomorrow when the winds of fashion change.
"While the commercial world of galleries, collectors and auction houses try to define what 'African art' is and who does or does not have value, we do not succumb to the puppet strings that impose on us definitions of our own art.
"We write and we create what we like,” she said, evoking the position of the late Steve Biko in his book, I Write What I Like.
Perhaps the creative industries need to self-regulate rather than allow external forces to dictate how they exist and evolve.
Savah chair prof Pfunzi Sidogi said the organisation was the principal professional association for art historians, visual culture scholars, curators, museum professionals and researchers in SA and beyond.
It was established in 1984 and was initially branded as the SA Association of Art Historians but changed its name to enable wider participation of professionals in the visual arts industry and to reflect the dynamics of SA's demographics.
“I can say, without stuttering, that the recently concluded 39th Savah conference was the most successful and spectacular conference in the association’s history," Sidogi said.
"The artistic, curatorial and performance (musical and artistic) elements that were programmed into the conference elevated the conference beyond being a mere talk shop."
It is important that we centre African studies and epistemologies with African academies.
The conference was a way of giving the young African scholars in attendance a platform to share their work and ideas and provide them with a unique agency that allows them to participate in the discourse that concerns them — to tell their own stories about who they are and how they want to be defined.
Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Stanley Museum of Art in the US, prof Peju Layiwola, said successful events and conferences such as this one needed a dedicated and pragmatic team to pull it off
The availability of funding (in good time) was also integral to the success of such gatherings.
The Savah conference provided an avenue for the participants to explore new directions in the field of art history.
It also emphasised the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship, showing how intertwined art is with music, performance, history, memory, film history and all aspects of visual culture and cultural studies.