Art finds strength in the face of tribulation
Laone Choeunyane | Monday September 7, 2026 06:00
The exhibition, titled “Resilience: The Unbreakable Human Spirit,” is curated by Thabo Kgatlwane in collaboration with the Embassy of Ukraine in Botswana. It opened for public viewing on Tuesday and will run from September 1 to 13 bringing together visual art, photography, sculpture, fashion and costume in a multidisciplinary showcase shaped by stories of struggle, survival and strength. The exhibition was conceptualised by Kgatlwane four months ago after he began reflecting on the state of Botswana’s creative industry and the resilience required of artists to keep creating despite its challenges. “I looked at the state of the creative industry in Botswana, and then I realised that nobody is as resilient as artists are,” he explained.
That observation became the foundation for an exhibition spanning several creative disciplines. Kgatlwane selected three visual artists, three photographers, two fashion designers and two sculptors, with each artist challenged to create work specifically for the exhibition. The collaboration with the Ukrainian Embassy added another dimension to the project, allowing the participating artists to learn more about Ukraine, the ongoing conflict and the everyday resilience of its people. The artists were provided with stipends to start developing their pieces, with each work carrying its own story. Materials brought from Ukraine, including gun shells, bullet fragments from the front lines and soil, were incorporated into some of the artworks, connecting the creative interpretations in Gaborone to the realities of a people living through war. For fine art photographer Goleba Baitse, women became a central symbol through which to explore strength and hope. Her photographs incorporate an actual bombshell from the war, creating striking juxtapositions between beauty and danger.
In one image, a woman performs what resembles a victory dance beside a bomb, presenting freedom as something that can persist even in the presence of destruction. Another work, titled “Nonofo”, mirrors the female form with the shape of the bomb, placing the woman beside something dangerous without portraying her as defeated by it. Baitse describes the body of work as part of her broader exploration of rebirth and the strength of Ukraine. Fashion and costume designer, Moitshepi Mokaila, approaches the subject through the eyes of children in her collection “Children of the Light”. Drawing inspiration from the loss of childhood innocence during conflict, her fantastical costumes use imagination as a form of resistance. Her pieces include an oversized sunflower headpiece resembling a crown, paying homage to Ukraine’s national flower, and a cape designed to evoke the playful wonder of childhood. Inspired partly by Alice in Wonderland, the collection embraces exaggerated and fantastical forms while retaining a connection to Ukrainian culture through its use of linen, which makes up about 90% of the collection. Mokaila highlighted that the collection was informed by the plight of Ukrainian children, particularly the loss of identity, language and connection to home brought about by the conflict.
Meanwhile, Wilson Ngoni presents a more abstract interpretation of resilience. The renowned artist’s works explore the idea of finding order through chaos, marking an evolution from the colourful dots associated with his earlier work to the use of stitches and sutures. The sutures become a visual metaphor for attempts to repair, connect and find harmony amid disorder. The exhibition also features Totang Motoloki, Tsaone Bahiti, Shirin Ettehad, Sentle Baitse, Ronald Kegomoditswe, Mboko Basiami, Boingotlo Seishiro and Akanyang Ntshingane, completing the 10-artist showcase. For Kgatlwane, bringing together different creative disciplines was important because the exhibition was never intended to be only about the visual appeal of the works.
Each creator was selected as a storyteller, with the pieces designed to carry narratives that audiences could engage with beyond what is immediately visible. The result is an exhibition where photographs, garments, paintings and sculptures speak to one another, offering different perspectives on the same question: how does the human spirit continue to create, rebuild and endure in the face of adversity?