Georgina Jaffee’s landmark collection of pan-African art explores hair as subject, material and metaphor

5 Feb 2026

Over many years, the Cape Town art collector Georgina Jaffee has assembled an unusually focused and expansive collection of contemporary art guided by a singular conceptual premise: hair as subject, material and metaphor. Spanning painting, photography, sculpture, textile works and even hybrid installations, and uniquely also foregrounding African and Afro-descendant perspectives, the collection is distinguished by both its conceptual clarity and historical depth.

The single-owner sale Hair Matters: A Selection of Works from the Georgina Jaffee Collection presents 41 works by artists including Ifeoma U. Anyaeji, Sethembile Msezane, Sabelo Mlangeni, Richard Mudariki, Tracey Rose, Hank Willis Thomas and Dominique Zinkpè. Previewed in an exhibition at Lemkus Gallery in December 2025 and currently on view at Strauss & Co’s Woodstock gallery in Cape Town, the sale of Jaffee’s extraordinary collection will take place on 21 February 2026 at 4pm.

“Rather than responding to the market, this collection is grounded in lived experience and sustained dialogue, shaped by Georgina Jaffee’s personal relationship to hair as a marker of her own identity,” says Kirstie Pietersen, Head of Sale, Strauss & Co. “The collection demonstrates how an intimate subject can open onto wider questions of power, race, gender and resistance. While the works engage contemporary practice, they are also rooted in history.”

Highlights include Ifeoma U. Anyaeji’s A No M’eba, Ma Na Anoho Mu Eba (I Am Here, But I Am Not Here – Presence, Absence) (estimate R400 000–600 000), an installation composed of braided plastic bags shown with a wooden chair and plinth, and Dominique Zinkpè’s Petite Princesse (Small Princess) (estimate R150 000–200 000), an assemblage of hand-sculpted and painted Ìbejì votive figures that form a large figure with matted hair. They are presented alongside historically significant works by Drum photographer Bob Gosani and Fikile Magadlela, a key figure in Black Consciousness art of the 1970s and co-founder of the Soweto Art Association.

Taken together, the works in Hair Matters offer a nuanced examination of the aesthetics, politics and social meanings of hair, with particular emphasis on African contexts and the connective threads linking the continent to its global diasporas. Artists in the sale represent a wide geographic spread, including Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Chile, China, Congo, Israel, Nigeria, South Africa, the United States and Zimbabwe.

As part of its on-going commitment to collector education and critical dialogue, Strauss & Co invited four curators to contribute commentaries on selected works in the sale. The short essays by Natasha Becker, Jared Leite, Vida Madighi-Oghu and Sihle Motsa form part of the 2026 iteration of Strauss & Co’s Curatorial Voices initiative, presented annually in February to coincide with the Investec Cape Town Art Fair.

Natasha Becker, curator of African Art at the de Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, examines works by Tracey Rose, Raïssa Karama Rwizibuka, Imraan Christian, Sabelo Mlangeni and Tuli Mekondjo. She writes that hair is “a material that carries memory, a subject that invites scrutiny, and an aesthetic that shapes how people see themselves and are seen by others”.

Jared Leite and Vida Madighi-Oghu,  graduates of the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, and Sihle Motsa graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, offer distinct perspectives on works by artists ranging from Hank Willis Thomas (represented by the recontextualized photograph Come out of the Bone Age, Darling…1955/2015, estimate R250 000 – 350 000) to Teresa Kutala Firmino (represented by the oil and collage work Discontinued Healing, estimate R60 000 – 80 000).

“My decision to invite young curatorial voices to participate alongside an established curator like Natasha Becker was intentional and informed by the Fallist student movement in South Africa in 2015-16,” says Kirstie Pietersen. “Hair was a highly contested subject. All four curators bring perspectives that not only respond to the theme of the sale, but activate hair as a living, evolving dialogue rather than a fixed theme.”

Hair Matters: A Selection of Works from the Georgina Jaffee Collection forms a centrepiece of Strauss & Co’s diverse February auction programme and is complemented by the sale Portway to Cohen: A Collector’s Legacy and Other Properties on the same day (21 February 2026 at 6pm). The online-only sale Woven Legacies: Fibre & Form features art and artefacts from Southern, Central and Western Africa, and is guest curated by textile collector Michael Heuermann (closes 11 February 2026). Strauss & Co is hosting three public talks at the 2026 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, to be presented consecutively on Friday, 20 February 2026, from 3pm to 7pm.

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February auctions:

Following on this suite of early February online sales are two special themed auctions to look out for:

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Upcoming Exhibitions: