4 October 2026 · Reporting checked against the current sources listed below.
Henrietta Scholtz’s Planetary Cognitive Ecologies: Gondwana opened at Wits Origins Centre on 3 October with an unusual cast: virtual reality, 3D animation, coal, ochre, bio-based inks and a plant that disappeared hundreds of millions of years ago.
At the centre is Glossopteris, the seed fern that spread across Gondwana before vanishing during the end-Permian extinction. Scholtz uses that deep-time reference to ask what adaptation looks like when environments change violently.
The exhibition’s material choices make the argument physical. Scientific research does not sit outside the artwork as explanation; it enters the work through substances, simulations and interactive forms.
That matters at a moment when climate culture can flatten into familiar imagery. Gondwana offers a different scale. Human timelines become tiny beside geological change, while today’s technologies become tools for looking backward as much as forward.
The exhibition runs until 14 November and forms part of the 2026 Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival programme.
