16 October 2026 · Reporting checked against the linked primary and specialist sources below.
A South African question on a London platform
At Frieze London this week, Cape Town-based artist Unathi Mkonto is not presenting architecture as a set of polished buildings. His solo presentation treats it as something that can grow, adapt and change. Goodman Gallery is showing a new body of sculptural work in the fair’s Artist-to-Artist section from 14 to 18 October 2026, following a nomination by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare.
The selection matters for more than international exposure. Artist-to-Artist is built around artists recommending other artists, shifting attention from the market’s usual rankings towards peer recognition. For Mkonto, whose work crosses sculpture, drawing, installation and performance, it offers a wider audience for questions developed in South Africa.
What happens when architecture stops being fixed?
Goodman Gallery describes the new sculptures as “inhabitable forms” shaped by ideas of cultivation, growth and regeneration. The central proposition is that organic systems can offer models for building, rather than treating architecture only as an exercise in permanent structures and straight lines.
This is not a proposal that trees or gardens can replace housing policy. It is an artistic way of challenging the assumption that the built environment is neutral. In a country where apartheid-era planning still shapes access, movement and belonging, asking who a space serves is never simply an aesthetic question.
The work behind the invitation
Born in Peddie in 1982, Mkonto studied architecture at Nelson Mandela University and later developed a multidisciplinary practice. His earlier exhibitions have explored the relationship between sculpture, habitation and urban imagination. Goodman Gallery’s Johannesburg exhibition earlier this year, If Joburg had a beach, who would go?, approached the city through an immersive sculptural environment.
The London presentation extends that enquiry rather than replacing it with an export-friendly version of “African design”. What is compelling is the specificity of the questions: how a structure carries history, how materials suggest movement, and how the spaces people inherit might be made more humane.
Why this moment matters
South African artists often reach global audiences through stories of national history. Mkonto works with that history, but refuses to make it the only frame. His sculptures propose a future-facing conversation about repair and possibility without pretending the past has disappeared.
Frieze runs through 18 October. This is a reported preview based on the gallery and fair programmes, not a firsthand review of the installed works. The strongest test will be what visitors encounter in the space itself.
