The BMW Art Car #20, designed by American artist Julie Mehretu, goes on show at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa in Cape Town in December. It is the centrepiece of “Turning Towards the Sun”, an exhibition that closes out Mehretu’s Art Car project and its five workshops held across Africa.
An Art Car that grew into a continental project
Zeitz MOCAA, the African Film and Media Arts Collective (AFMAC) and BMW are jointly presenting “Turning Towards the Sun”. The exhibition runs from 11 December 2026 to 15 August 2027 on Level 4 of the Cape Town museum. For the whole run, Julie Mehretu’s BMW Art Car #20 will stand in the museum’s Atrium Bowl.
According to BMW, the exhibition only exists because Mehretu was chosen as the artist for the 20th Art Car. She treated the commission as a way to build “portals” into new worlds shaped by Pan-African perspectives and Pan-African cinema. The idea came from Arundhati Roy’s 2020 reflection that “the pandemic is a portal”.
Mehretu developed the project with filmmaker Mehret Mandefro and the late Koyo Kouoh, who was Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA. Together they set up AFMAC and ran five workshops in Lagos (Nigeria), Tangier (Morocco), Nairobi (Kenya), Dakar (Senegal) and Cape Town (South Africa). Artists led the workshops, and several of them also appear in the exhibition.
“For me, the idea of a portal is about opening up possibilities – creating space to imagine beyond the worlds we have inherited. African cinema holds an extraordinary history of artists using the moving image to document and reimagine their realities. Through AFMAC, we create opportunities for artists to encounter one another, and to explore what could emerge when these histories and perspectives come into conversation.” – Julie Mehretu
Six artists and filmmakers on show
The exhibition presents work by six artists and filmmakers:
- Ethiopian director Zeresenay Berhane Mehari
- French-Senegalese filmmaker Mati Diop
- Kenyan multidisciplinary artist Jim Chuchu
- Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu
- African-American poet Robin Coste Lewis
- British interdisciplinary artist collective The Otolith Group
The video installations draw on the ideals of Pan-African solidarity and post-liberation visions. Their themes include cultural expressions of women’s rage, Black queer masculinities on the continent, young people’s experience of difficult political moments, and African cosmo-technics. Animation is explored through the writing of Nigerian author Amos Tutuola. The show also traces the history of cultural institutions in Africa and of the people who promoted the continent as a place where film knowledge is produced.
Zeitz MOCAA Assistant Curator Khanyi Mawhayi is the curator. She is supported by Dr Phokeng Setai and Dr Greer Valley, with assistance from Angela Muritu, Inshaaf Jamodien, Evyn Banawoye and Reem Aljeally.
“The exhibition asks, ‘How do we build sustainable Pan-African social and pedagogical infrastructures between artists and institutions in Africa?’ ‘Turning Towards the Sun’ is an invitation to think expansively about cinema and its related pedagogies; to trace networks of solidarity across Africa and embrace the generosity that emerges when we imagine people as the infrastructure that sustains film and cinema on the Continent.” – Khanyi Mawhayi
Where the title comes from
The name comes from a remark by Senegalese director Ousmane Sembène in Tunisian filmmaker Ferid Boughedir’s 1983 documentary Twenty Years of African Cinema (Caméra d’Afrique). Asked how Europeans read his films, Sembène replied: “Why should I be like a sunflower turning towards the sun? I, myself, am the sun.” The curators turn the line around. In their reading, paying attention to film from Africa and its diaspora is itself a turning towards the sun.
BMW’s long-running Art Car programme
The BMW Art Car series began in 1975, when Alexander Calder painted the first car. Mehretu’s Art Car #20 was created on a BMW M Hybrid V8 race car. Peter van Binsbergen, Chairman and CEO of BMW South Africa, presents the Cape Town exhibition as an example of how the programme now reaches beyond the cars themselves:
“For more than 50 years, BMW has been committed to culture, with the BMW Art Cars at the heart of this engagement. ‘Turning Towards the Sun’ demonstrates the catalytic power of artistic freedom: what began with Julie Mehretu’s vision for her BMW Art Car #20 has evolved into a wider platform for artistic exchange and collaboration across the African continent. Cultural engagement also has a strong tradition for BMW in South Africa, not least through our partnership with Zeitz MOCAA since the museum’s founding.”
The exhibition belongs to Zeitz MOCAA’s series of research-driven shows on significant artists from Africa and its diaspora. The Mellon Foundation and BMW South Africa support the museum’s curatorial and exhibition programme.
Facts: “Turning Towards the Sun”
- Venue: Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town – Level 4 (exhibition), Atrium Bowl (Art Car)
- Dates: 11 December 2026 to 15 August 2027
- Centrepiece: BMW Art Car #20 by Julie Mehretu
- Presented by: Zeitz MOCAA, AFMAC and BMW
- Curator: Khanyi Mawhayi
- Artists: Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, Mati Diop, Jim Chuchu, Wanuri Kahiu, Robin Coste Lewis, The Otolith Group
“Turning Towards the Sun” opens at Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town on 11 December 2026 and runs until 15 August 2027.
Source: www.press.bmwgroup.com