There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)

There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)
An exhibition curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula
ARAK Collections Curatorial Fellow, 2025–2026

Exhibition dates: February 12 – April 10, 2026
Opening: Thursday, February 12, 2026, 5.30 PM for 6 PM
Venue: University of Johannesburg
Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) Gallery

Talk: Saturday, February 14, 2026, 12.30 PM
A Walkabout and Talka bout with Soukaina Aboulaoula and Ashraf Jamal

Artists: Sidney Mang’ong’o, Samson Mnisi, Mongezi Ncaphayi, Zenáeca Singh, Gor Soudan, Agnes Waruguru Njoroge, Di Smith, and Salma E. Murad

The University of Johannesburg FADA Gallery and the ARAK Collection are pleased to present There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of), an exhibition curated by Soukaina Aboulaoula for the ARAK Collections Curatorial Fellowship, 2025–2026.

On view from February 12 to April 10,2026 at the FADA Gallery, There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) brings together contemporary abstract practices that engage opacity as an aesthetic, political, and ethical position. The exhibition features works on paper, textile, installation, and sculpture.

Drawing from Édouard Glissant’s notion of opacity, the exhibition approaches African abstraction not as a formalretreat, but as a mode of relation. It resists the flattening of singular histories, memories, and cosmologies into fixed legibility, inviting viewers to engage with abstraction as a material language shaped by inheritance,resistance, and embodied knowledge.

Borrowing its title from Sun Ra, There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of) gestures toward parallel oneiric, spiritual, and intellectual dimensions beyond dominant narratives. The exhibition positions itself as a site of encounter rather than explanation , proposing abstraction as a form of situated knowledge and as a practice of attunement, intuition, and sensorial experience rather than interpretation.

About the Curator

Soukaina Aboulaoula is an independent curator and researcher based in Marrakesh, Morocco. Her practice engages memory, history, narration, flexible artistic pedagogies, and modes of knowledge transmission. Her curatorial work includes Right on Time(Sheffield Doc/Fest, 2021); If a Tree Falls in a Forest (Les Rencontres d’Arles, 2020–2022, co-curated); and May Our Song Be Worthy of Those Who Listen, a reading room and exhibition developed within the Raw Académie programme at La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2024).

In 2025–2026, she was an ARAK Collections Curatorial Fellow, during which she curated There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of), an exhibition on African abstraction and opacity featuring works from the ARAK Collection. She holds an MRes in Advanced Practices (Visual Cultures) from Goldsmiths, University of London, and was a recipient of the CAORC / Andrew W. Mellon Art History Fellowship(2020–2024) in affiliation with the American Center for Maghrebi Studies in Tunis (CEMAT). She is also the co-founder and co-director, with Yvon Langué, of Untitled Design Agency, a multidisciplinary platform for editorial design, art direction, and creative projects founded in 2017.

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