An Exhibition & A Story
Durbanville · June 2026
The Exhibition
What happens when a child's mark becomes part of something larger?
Threaded brings together children's artwork, textile language and contemporary design to explore how creativity connects people across age, background, memory and place. It is built on a belief that is simple and serious: that a child's creative voice grows most powerfully in relationship.
The works here were made by children — but they were made possible by the teachers and mentors who sat alongside them, asked the right questions, and refused to let an idea stay small. Drawings became visual worlds that move beyond the page into fabric, installation, pattern and shared experience. Each work is a thread in a larger story: one child's imagination braided with a mentor's care, then woven into something a stranger might hold, wear or live with.
"Culture is the thread that connects us. It teaches us to see one another."
Edward Selematsela, founder, Little Artists School
A Glimpse of the Works
We Are All Connected
Hanging installation — twine, beadwork and wrapped forms
We made this together, and we wanted it to hang the way our hair hangs — in braids. Across Africa, people wear their hair in braids strung with beads, each strand its own colour and pattern, all of them growing from the same head. That is what these threads are. The beads are the beads we wear. The strands fall and gather at the bottom into a nest — because a nest is where you are held, where you belong, where everyone has a place to come home to.
Some threads are plain twine and some are bright with colour, but they all hang from the same beam and they all reach the same floor. That is the whole idea. We are different strands, and we are one piece. We are all connected.
Of One Thread
Sculpture — paper and wound wool
This is a person. Not a particular person — just a human, the way we are all human underneath whatever we are wearing. We wrapped the body in wool, winding it round and round in every colour, because wool is thread and thread is what this whole exhibition is made of. The same single strand goes over and over the figure until it becomes a garment, a skin, a covering we all share.
Look closely and the colours never stop: green, red, blue, white, gold, all of them held together by being wound around the same form. That is what we wanted to say. Strip everything back and we are the same thing, made of one thread.
Unite
Collaborative textile — wool and thread
We made this with our hands, and we made it about hands. Two of them reach across the cloth toward a red heart, tied together by a single red thread that loops between them and never lets go. We stitched in wool because wool is warm and soft, and that is what care feels like — comfort, protection, being held.
Every part was made by a different one of us, in our own colours and our own way — but stitched together they become one piece. That is what we wanted to show. Each of us adds something, and together we are stronger and more beautiful than we are alone.
Phumulamqasha Informal Settlement
Mixed media
This is where life happens — layered up the hillside, shack against shack, every wall a different colour and texture and material. We built it from fragments, the way the place itself is built: from whatever is at hand, put together with care until it becomes a home.
Each little house is somebody's. Each one is community, improvisation, and the will to make something beautiful even when things are hard.
African Queen
Tapestry — fabric on cloth
Our art is about the threads that connect people, places and stories. We stitched her headwrap from colourful thread because a headwrap holds culture, pride and joy — it is something you wear and something you carry. Around her are the busy streets and the everyday movement, because that is where life happens.
By stitching and painting together we are showing how our own lives are woven like fabric: different colours, different shapes, different textures, but all connected. That is what threaded means to us — that we are tied to our ancestors, to our community, and to our dreams.
Our Houses
Tapestry — fabric on cloth
We sat down together with one aim: to show how houses connect to make a community. Every home you see is bright and bold, scattered across the black like lights in the dark. Each one belongs to someone. Each one is tied to the others by threads you cannot see — the invisible threads of belonging, hidden inside the fabric but holding the whole thing together.
The dream we all share is simple: to live in love and happiness, in peace. We made the houses loud and colourful because that need is loud and colourful too — the same threaded wish for shelter and safety that people carry everywhere in the world.
The Little Artists School
Three afternoons a week in Braamfontein, Johannesburg, around 75 children draw, paint and create under the guidance of professional artists. They come from some of Johannesburg's most under-resourced communities, and the school opens its doors to those who need it most. The work they make is not craft for charity. It is expressive, original art.
Founded in 1995 by Edward Selematsela, the school offers free classes, materials, food and mentorship. Over three decades it has supported more than 1,800 children — and opened doors that have changed the course of lives.
The artists who sat alongside them
Threaded exists because professional artists gave their time to the children — many of them shaped by the Little Artists School themselves, now teaching the next generation. Several have exhibited nationally and internationally, from ABSA L’Atelier and the Turbine Art Fair to galleries in London, India and beyond.