Hair Matters

Hair Matters is a tightly focused, thematic auction that initiates a critical dialogue on the profound significance of hair in contemporary artistic practice. Featuring a cohort of accomplished contemporary artists, primarily those working from the African continent or within the global African diaspora, this selection of works is guided by a singular conceptual mandate: every work turns to hair as a powerful nexus, serving as medium, metaphor, or focal point of exploration.

Hair Matters illuminates the diverse interpretations and artistic vocabularies through which hair shapes identity, memory, and meaning across cultures, nations, and histories. Featuring artists such as Leonce Raphael Agbodjélou (Benin), Ifeoma U. Anyaeji (Nigeria), SethembileMsezane (South Africa), and Hank Willis Thomas (United States), the auction examines the aesthetics, politics, and sociology of hair, with particular emphasis on African perspectives and the connective threads that link the continent and its global diasporas.

Hair Matters: A Selection of Works from The Georgina Jaffee Collection will go under the hammer at Strauss & Co on Saturday, 21 February 2026. Auction preview opens at Strauss & Co Cape Town from 26 January 2026

Visit hair-matters.org to learn more.

Teresa Kutala Firmino, Discontinued Healing

Hair Matters
A Selection of Works from The Georgina Jaffee Collection

Saturday, 21 February 2026 at 4pm

Fikile Magadlela, Portrait of a Man with Foliage Emerging from His Crown

Franck Kemkeng Noah, Le Kounga au Vatican (The Kounga at the Vatican)

Raïssa Karama Rwizibuka, From the Series Our Hair is Beautiful

Natasha Becker

Appointed in 2020 as the inaugural Curator of African Art at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Natasha Becker has led a dynamic reimagining of the Museums’ African art program. She has launched a new slate of contemporary and historical exhibitions that centre artists as storytellers and worldbuilders. Her curatorial vision bridges geographies and generations, inviting audiences into deeper dialogue with Africa’s artistic lineages and its vibrant present.

Becker’s exhibitions — including Lhola Amira: Facing the Future (2022), Leilah Babirye: We Have a History (2024), and the forthcoming Nengi Omuku: The Gathering (2026) — foreground themes of care and community. With advanced training in African history and art history, she has organised exhibitions across continents, championing artists whose work expands global understandings of African and diasporic creativity.

Vida Madighi-Oghu

Vida Madighi-Oghu is an interdisciplinary culture worker, that describes themself as a storyteller fascinated with knowledge exchange and African cultural futures. Madighi-Oghu’sthinking, ideologies and practices are framed by their multicultural upbringing being Nigerian by birth and raised in Luanda, Angola and being based and practicing as a curator, project co-ordinator, artist and writer in Cape Town, South Africa. As a result of their Pan-African foundations, Madighi-Oghu seeks to weave connections between culture production and the greater Afrocentric socio-geopolitical histories that shape narratives today and can be utilised to cultivate more just, inclusive and sustainable future sites.

Jared Leite

Jared Leite is writer, curator, and gallerist with an interest in developing infrastructure in the visual arts ecosystem. He is the co-founder and director of Lemkus Gallery, an alternative gallery model centred on artist residencies and collaborative projects with emerging artists. He holds a Master of Art in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town. He has a background as a researcher and lecturer at the institution, having worked in the Fine Arts department for several years. As a researcher and aspiring academic, Jared’s primary focus has been on the historical contributions of artists-of-colour, particularly those that have been excluded from or undertheorized within the global arts canon. His curatorial practice has borne numerous successful exhibitions, art fair presentations, and community-led events. As a curator, he is particularly attentive to critical artistic interventions by early-career artists and plays the role of extending studio practices through research, writing, and strategic display. He has authored several curatorial statements, catalogue essays, and press releases. His curatorial projects have been featured in several notable publications, such as ArtThrob, Latitudes, ArtForum, and Daily Maverick. 

Sihle Motsa

Sihle Motsa is an art historian and art practitioner whose work engages language, visual culture, gender, and Black expressive traditions. Motsa’s curatorial practice explores Black material cultures, ecological vernaculars, and Black women’s artistic practices. With a Master’s in Art History from the University of the Witwatersrand, she has worked as a lecturer, researcher and writer, contributing to platforms such as the Daily Maverick, Artthroband Atlantica Contemporaries, and authored a catalogue essay for When Rain Clouds Gather: Black South African Women Artist’s, 1940-2000 (2022-2023) at the Norval Foundation, Cape Town. Attentive to oral history and digital archives, Motsa examines how myths and meanings are formed, preserved and transformed, approaching the future as a layered history that holds the potential for new knowledge. She is currently pursuing a second Master’s in Historical Studies at the University of Cape Town and is the recipient of the Marie-SolangesApollon Scholarship (2023) and a member of the DAAD Museums Lab cohort (2024).