Born and based in Maseru, Lesotho, this year’s FNB Art Prize winner, Thato Toeba’s works ask us to slow down, look closer and think more deeply about what we’re seeing.
Artist, lawyer and social sciences researcher working with mixed-media photomontage and assemblage, Toeba uses collage and assemblage as they bring together photos, textures and materials to tell layered stories about identity, power and history. Their images don’t follow one clear path. Instead, they hold many meanings at once, asking the viewer to deeply engage and consider what they’re seeing.
Influenced by a “suspicion of format things, such as politics and institutions,” Toeba uses photography to depict “how much of what is socially obeyed is hallucinated,” questioning the accuracy of historical archives and the ways the tenderness and the hardships of life intertwine. Their installations make use of architectural space as materials to think through questions of power; the shadow of the empire and its continuing cast into the collective spirit of the global south.
Winner of the FNB Art Prize’s 15th iteration, the jury for this year’s FNB Art Prize said that “There is a distinct sense of control in how they handle composition, texture and text, revealing a commitment to process as much as to meaning. What set Toeba apart was the clarity of vision, the formal maturity of the work and the considered pace of their trajectory. In the field of strong nominees, theirs emerged as the most resolved and coherent.”
As the winner of the 2025 Prize, Toeba will receive a cash prize as well as a solo exhibition at Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2026.
