Meeting Kgorong's cultural keeper

Tshegofatso Seoka's visionary curation at Unisa Art Gallery seeks to redefine access, amplify marginalised voices and to position African art at the centre of the space

- Kulani Nkuna

approach the Unisa Art Gallery, housed in the aptly named Kgorong Building, is to navigate a landscape of permissions.

The word “Kgorong”, meaning “meeting place” in Setswana, contrasts sharply with the cones and boom gates where vigilant security probes every vehicle’s purpose.

Yet within this architecture of barriers, Tshegofatso Seoka has created something extraordinary — a sanctuary where access to African consciousness requires no special clearance.

“It really felt like a dream come true and a homecoming of note,” Seoka reflects on her appointment as curator a few years ago.

Today, she moves through the gallery with assured composure and sartorial confidence, having transformed it into a dynamic cultural epicentre.

Initially trained in fine arts, Seoka discovered her passion lay, not in producing art, but in interpreting its deeper meanings within the African artistic landscape.

Her curatorial philosophy emerges from lived practice, shaped by an unconventional trajectory through South Africa’s art institutions.

“I've always been more concerned with the greater meaning of artworks and what they sought to communicate about the artist — their experiences and thought processes,” she explains.

Seoka’s formative training at Pretoria Art Museum, under Mmutle Kgokong, followed by various institutional roles, prepared her for this pivotal position.

This background informs her approach to exhibitions, which she describes as contributing to everything from “postcolonial conversations on decoloniality, Africanism and continental diversity” through to thoughtful programming and strategic acquisitions.