At a moment when identity feels increasingly negotiable, two local artists turn thread, memory, and everyday life into a challenge: what do we preserve, and what are we quietly letting disappear?
GOSEGO MOTSUMI
Walk into Threaded In Culture and you quickly realise this is not an exhibition about nostalgia. Opened recently at Alliance Francaise de Gaborone, the contemporary showcase places the works of Boemo Lunga and Goemeone Modisane in conversation, not to agree with each other, but to pull at the same knot from different ends. One works with material disruption while the other works with cultural memory, and together they ask an uncomfortable question: if culture is alive, who gets to decide what survives?
NOT A MUSEUM PIECE
Boemo Lunga’s practice has long flirted with experimentation through charcoal, fabric, newspapers and mixed media, but this time thread enters the frame. His new body of work uses stitched surfaces and layered textures to create pieces that feel unfinished in the most intentional way, as if identity itself is still under construction.
Across the room, Goemeone Modisane grounds the exhibition in visual storytelling shaped by Setswana culture and the rhythms of everyday Botswana life. His works do not romanticise heritage; they place it under light and ask viewers to sit with it, which is why curator Thabo Kgatlwane said in an interview that the pairing was deliberate.
Culture, Kgatlwane said, is not a fixed thing. It can be preserved, questioned, interpreted and reimagined. That tension becomes the exhibition’s strongest move, because it treats culture as something inherited, but also something actively shaped every day.
THE THREAD IS THE MESSAGE
The exhibition arrives at a time when globalisation, technology and changing social realities are influencing how people understand themselves and their cultural identities. In Botswana, there is growing interest in preserving heritage while also redefining what it means to be Motswana in a contemporary world, and Kgatlwane believes artists should be part of that conversation.
What felt urgent about the exhibition, he said, was the need to create space for artists to contribute to that conversation. Art has a unique ability to bridge generations, challenge assumptions and encourage reflection, and the title itself carries a quiet warning by asking whether the threads of culture are tightening or loosening.
On the surface, Threaded In Culture references Boemo’s threaded canvases and Goemeone’s cultural themes, but underneath it asks deeper questions about what is being held together and what is beginning to fray. Visitors leave with more than images, because the exhibition asks them to reflect on what parts of culture are being preserved, what parts are being allowed to fade, and how personal experiences contribute to the collective story of Botswana.
Most importantly, Kgatlwane hopes the exhibition sparks conversations about identity, creativity and cultural pride that do not end when people leave the gallery. Threaded In Culture opened on 17 June 2026 and will remain on view until 3 July 2026.