NIROX Sculpture Park is 30ha of cultivated lawns, arbors, fields, waterways, and wetlands, on the banks of the Blaauwbankspruit River adjoining the Kkatlhamphi Private Nature Reserve — a 1000ha wilderness of hills, valleys, riverine forests, caves, and highveld grasslands, populated with diverse local game and birdlife.
The Park hosts more than 60 permanent and long-term installations by artists from across the globe, and at least one annual large-scale curated exhibition of new and temporary installations and performances, in collaboration with NIROX’s wide circle of global partners and curatorial affiliations.
RECENT ADDITIONS
EXTERIOR II, 2023
Wood
156 x 94 x 62 cm
Exterior II (2023) was installed shortly after the opening of Serge Alain Nitegeka's exhibition Structural Response IV (2023–24) in NIROX's Covered Space. The artwork was produced while in residence, in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's Workshop. Exposed to the elements, it will eventually begin to shows signs of weathering. To learn more about Nitegeka's practice, click on the button below.
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
THE GOLDEN FOG COLLECTOR
EBRU KURBAK, 2025
The Golden Fog Collector is a large-scale golden net that captures water from fog and returns it to the pond it hangs on, exploring the entanglement of material, technology, ecology, and history. Installed in a landscape that was once the cradle of humankind, which has been scarred by gold mining and is now facing water scarcity, the installation transforms a tool driven by extraction into a gesture of restoration.
The net reflects one of the earliest human technologies: an ancient tool that extended humanity’s capacity to catch, gather and carry, providing the roots of a later-inflamed anthropocentric technological evolution. The gold threads used in the installation are sourced from traditional European manufactories that recycle gold circulating within Europe, originally extracted from various parts of the world and used in gold-decorated objects. By returning this gold to South Africa and building an unusual relationship between water and gold, the work invites reflection on the politics and enduring consequences of value assigned to materiality.
EXTERIOR II, 2023
Wood
156 x 94 x 62 cm
Exterior II (2023) was installed shortly after the opening of Serge Alain Nitegeka's exhibition Structural Response IV (2023–24) in NIROX's Covered Space. The artwork was produced while in residence, in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's Workshop. Exposed to the elements, it will eventually begin to shows signs of weathering. To learn more about Nitegeka's practice, click on the button below.
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
UNDULATION III
LEDELLE MOE, 2025
Undulation III is a continuation of core thematics in Ledelle Moe’s practice, including concepts of monumentality, fragments, and ruins. Created from soil, cement, water, and steel, the work takes the form of an inchoate mass that oscillates between recognisable imagery and an inert, amorphous monument, engaging with notions of permanence and impermanence, strength and vulnerability.
The Latin word humus—meaning earth or ground—is the root of the word human, underscoring a fundamental connection between human beings and the earth: both in origin and in physical composition, as bodies are formed from elements found in soil and ultimately return to it. Humus also refers to the dark, organic matter in soil produced through the decay of plant and animal life, reinforcing the cyclical relationship between material, body, and ground.
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EXTERIOR II, 2023
Wood
156 x 94 x 62 cm
Exterior II (2023) was installed shortly after the opening of Serge Alain Nitegeka's exhibition Structural Response IV (2023–24) in NIROX's Covered Space. The artwork was produced while in residence, in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's Workshop. Exposed to the elements, it will eventually begin to shows signs of weathering. To learn more about Nitegeka's practice, click on the button below.
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
HOME - ikhaya
DIEGO MASERA, 2025
HOME – ikhaya reflects on the precarious reality of millions who inhabit informal settlements—structures born of necessity, crafted from whatever materials can be found. These makeshift architectures speak to an existence shaped by impermanence and systemic socio-economic disparities.
This work seeks to confront that reality while acknowledging the profound beauty, resilience, and dignity embedded within it. The use of gold leaf evokes Johannesburg’s origins as a city founded on wealth extracted from the earth, contrasting sharply with the enduring poverty surrounding it. In doing so, the sculpture becomes a dialogue between abundance and deprivation, permanence and transience.
The title itself underscores a deeper inquiry: the distinction between a house—a physical shelter—and a home, an intimate, often fragile, construct of belonging and connection. Through HOME – ikhaya, I invite viewers to reflect on what constitutes home, to reconsider our interdependence as human beings, and to reimagine community as a shared space with one another and with nature.
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EXTERIOR II, 2023
Wood
156 x 94 x 62 cm
Exterior II (2023) was installed shortly after the opening of Serge Alain Nitegeka's exhibition Structural Response IV (2023–24) in NIROX's Covered Space. The artwork was produced while in residence, in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's Workshop. Exposed to the elements, it will eventually begin to shows signs of weathering. To learn more about Nitegeka's practice, click on the button below.
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
SILENCE AS A ROOM (I OF V), REMEMBRANCE
CORAL BIJOUX, 2025
Silence as a Room 1of 5, Remembrance, engages the traces left behind of an artwork set in the Karoo desert lands near the small town of Richmond.
In the tradition of land art sculpture, this work, created in 2022 and completed in October 2024, was demolished by the very machine (a grader), Silence as a Room engaged as symbolic of capital and industry. The sculptural process deliberately engaged a slow-hand-making process, speaking back to notions of ‘colonialisation by machine’’ and domination of the earth when it becomes known as land, a commodity. Where Silence#1 offered a panacea to the world’s noise, immersed in political and socio-cultural rhetoric, a salve that soothed the ecological, indigenous earth, echoing the Feminine as mother, yet named, resourced, and outsourced for its richness.
EXTERIOR II, 2023
Wood
156 x 94 x 62 cm
Exterior II (2023) was installed shortly after the opening of Serge Alain Nitegeka's exhibition Structural Response IV (2023–24) in NIROX's Covered Space. The artwork was produced while in residence, in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's Workshop. Exposed to the elements, it will eventually begin to shows signs of weathering. To learn more about Nitegeka's practice, click on the button below.
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
PLASTICISED TREES
PAULA ANTA, 2025
During her residency, Paula created 'Plasticised Trees' in response to the overwhelming presence of plastic in our environment. Made largely from fossil fuels, plastic drives climate change and contaminates ecosystems, from the peaks of Everest to human breast milk.
Paula wraps fallen trees in discarded plastic bags, then heat bonds the material to the bark, forming a second skin that is both protective and confronting.
Referencing waste-sorting colour codes in Europe and the corporate branding saturating South Africa, the works stand as evidence, not debris—imagining how the remains of environmental damage might form part of its repair.
EXTERIOR II, 2023
Wood
156 x 94 x 62 cm
Exterior II (2023) was installed shortly after the opening of Serge Alain Nitegeka's exhibition Structural Response IV (2023–24) in NIROX's Covered Space. The artwork was produced while in residence, in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's Workshop. Exposed to the elements, it will eventually begin to shows signs of weathering. To learn more about Nitegeka's practice, click on the button below.
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
BOOK OF STARS (CONSIDERATIONS)
DIANA VIVES & DOUGLAS GIMBERG, 2025
Situated in a clearing near the studio where it was conceived, Book of Stars (Considerations) (2025) reflects on the cycles of matter across deep time, traced through the interplay of stone, water, and light. Set like an open book, two slabs of dolomite tilt gently upward while a thin film of water flows across their surfaces. Etched into the stone are the asterisms of constellations that appear directly overhead during the winter solstice, with the brightest stars marked by rivulets rising through copper pipes. Stars and water converge in a single gesture, recalling the reflective pools once used by ancient cultures as portals to the cosmos.
Four materials animate the work. The first is dolomite. Sourced from NIROX, it forms the bedrock of the Cradle of Humankind, created from the sediments of warm shallow seas about 2.6 billion years ago. Known as stromatolites, its banded structures (formed by colonies of cyanobacteria) record some of the earliest evidence of life on Earth. The slow dissolution of this rock by groundwater carved out the karstic cave systems that would later shelter early hominins and preserve their fossils. In this way, the same stone links the origins of microbial life to our ancient ancestry. Then there are water and copper, which both have cosmic origins. Water predates the Earth. It is formed from hydrogen atoms that were created in the first seconds after the Big Bang, and oxygen born in the death of giant stars. Copper, too, is a cosmic material, dispersed through interstellar dust. It is also the first metal shaped by human hands, and is vital to living cells and modern technology. The fourth material is time: to look at the stars is to look backward. The brightest cluster visible above NIROX, Omega Centauri, is about 15,800 light-years away. The light that reaches us today began its journey from the cluster when early humans were painting on cave walls. Yet Book of Stars also gestures toward the future: as dolomite is soluble, and as rainfall grows more acidic with rising carbon dioxide, processes of weathering accelerate — a reminder that even stone is not fixed.
In this way, Book of Stars echoes the continuity of sky knowledge that has guided communities for millennia, orienting ritual life, agriculture, and imagination, while the sculpture’s plumbing evokes the hidden infrastructures that sustain contemporary life: the conduits that move water, energy, and data. The work therefore holds a dual character: above, a representation of the heavens that turns its face towards the stars, a field of orientation and wonder; and below, a network of complex systems that sustain this dream. Here, the sculpture's 'plumbing' evokes the conduits that sustain contemporary life — moving water, energy and data — echoing the invisible infrastructures that underpin modern existence.
EXTERIOR II, 2023
Wood
156 x 94 x 62 cm
Exterior II (2023) was installed shortly after the opening of Serge Alain Nitegeka's exhibition Structural Response IV (2023–24) in NIROX's Covered Space. The artwork was produced while in residence, in the Villa-Legodi Centre for Sculpture's Workshop. Exposed to the elements, it will eventually begin to shows signs of weathering. To learn more about Nitegeka's practice, click on the button below.
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
PARENTHESIS
KHALID ALBIAH, 2025
Supported by Qatar Museums, Parenthesis is a facade of a life-size bronze sculpture portraying a fallen dictatorship on top of a plinth.
Viewers can climb the plinth and settle their bodies behind the sculpture, filling in the shape, symbolising the transformative journey from individual to dictator. However, as participants reach the zenith, they are compelled downwards, mirroring the inescapable downfall of dictators.
The sculpture serves as a metaphor for the cyclical nature of power and the shared destiny of those seduced by autocratic tendencies.
LONG-TERM
PAST
