Azibuyele Emasisweni: Pitika Ntuli’s Return to the Source at Ditsong Museum

Reclaiming the Ancient in Contemporary Form

Open until the end of June

Prof. Pitika Ntuli’s award-winning solo exhibition, curated by Ruzy Rusike, is currently on view at the Ditsong National Museum of Cultural History, Pretoria, presented by the South African Gallery of Legends in partnership with Ditsong Museums.

 

Comprising 45 bone sculptures created from elephant, rhino, giraffe and horse bones, the exhibition draws on African spiritual knowledge systems to address questions of healing, memory and reconnection with nature. This is the first opportunity for Gauteng audiences to experience the exhibition in physical form, following its national tour from the National Arts Festival to Oliewenhuis Art Museum and Durban Art Gallery.

 

Azibuyele Emasisweni remains on view until June 2026.

Pitika Ntuli's latest poetry collection, Palestine in My Heart (published by Botsotso), gathers poems written over several years in response to the ongoing suffering in Gaza. Moving between lyrical empathy and biting satire, the collection draws powerful parallels between Palestinian experience and South Africa's own history of resistance, linking Gaza to Sharpeville and Jenin to Boipatong.

 

The book is more than verse alone. It is illustrated with reproductions of Ntuli's striking sculptures — bone, stone, and reclaimed metal shaped into vessels of ancestral memory and political testimony. As ever, Ntuli writes as the Boneblower of the Living Stone, offering work that is at once elegy, incantation, and act of solidarity.

 

Palestine in My Heart is available now from Botsotso. ISBN: 978-0-6398785-0-8.