How do images speak to us? Is their language purely visual, or does it extend into memory, sensation, and even sound? While images are encountered through sight, they often awaken an internal soundscape shaped by experience, emotion, and cultural context. Sound, though unheard, plays a vital role in how images are perceived and felt.

Images are instinctively associated with sound: the imagined echo of a space, the hush of a moment, the noise that precedes or follows what is seen. These sounds emerge from personal histories and emotional states, neither wholly subjective nor objective.

Every image carries a latent sound—drawn from memory, touch, and lived experience. A photograph may contain the rustle of air, the weight of a pause, or a moment suspended in time. No two viewers hear an image in the same way.

This exhibition considers the sounds that accompany image-making itself—ambient noise, internal dialogue, or silence—and how such silent or imagined sound transfers from artist to viewer.

By exploring the interplay between sight and hearing, Silence invites viewers to listen as attentively as they look, and to consider silence not as absence, but as a resonant space filled with meaning.

The exhibition features works by Thalente Khomo, Tatenda Chidora, and Andile Bhala, in which images extend beyond the visual to activate an intimate dialogue between what is seen and what is heard—or remembered.

Exhibiting Artists

Thalente Khomo is a photographer whose practice is rooted in ancestral knowledge and childhood memory. Working between the physical and the imaginative, her work explores themes of spirituality, trauma, healing, and memory, examining how personal and collective histories shape identity and lived experience. Khomo has exhibited widely in South Africa and internationally, including at Berman Contemporary (Johannesburg), the Güterbahnhof Bremen and Leipzig International Art Residencies (Germany), the G20: Together We Art Exhibition at the Bihar Museum Biennale (India), as well as notable exhibitions at the Durban Art Gallery, SMAC Gallery, and the American Center for Photographers (Chicago).

Tatenda Chidora is an award-winning Zimbabwean visual artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Known for both commercial and fine art photography, his visual storytelling investigates and celebrates the multifaceted expression of Blackness. His work incorporates performance and play to explore themes of place, identity, and manhood. In 2023, Chidora was the British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Humanity Vol. 5 Series Winner, and in 2022 he was shortlisted for the Contemporary African Photography Prize. He has participated in numerous international festivals and exhibitions, including 1:54 London, among others.

Andile Bhala, based in Johannesburg, is a South African documentary and commercial photographer whose work explores identity, memory, masculinity, spirituality, and resilience, capturing the complexities of Black life with empathy and nuance. A Market Photo Workshop graduate, he has exhibited widely both locally and internationally, with notable series including uBUDODA (2018), God Moves (2022–2024), Inkumbulo (2025), and the Nthabiseng exhibition in Jakarta, Indonesia (2025). From 2020 to 2025, Bhala served as a Fujifilm South Africa Brand Ambassador, mentoring emerging photographers and championing authentic, human-centered visual storytelling.