“Each stone I place is an act of remembrance. These portraits aren’t just images, they’re monuments. I want their legacies to outlast us, as they should.”
- Ziyanda Majozi
MASTERS AND HEROES LIVE LONGER | ZIYANDA MAJOZI, 2025
In Masters and Heroes Live Longer, Ziyanda Majozi breathes enduring life into South Africa’s cultural and political icons through the tactile permanence of mosaic. Working in ceramic, natural stone, smalti, engineered stone, tile cement glue, and brick, Majozi constructs vibrant portraits that do more than depict, they monumentalize. Her chosen materials, traditionally associated with architecture and endurance, function both symbolically and literally to "set in stone" the legacies of figures such as Dumile Feni, Helen Sebidi, William Kentridge, and Albie Sachs.
Each tesserae - a fragment of earth, pigment, or glass - is meticulously placed, echoing the layered histories and fractured struggles of those who shaped the nation’s past and present. By fusing the ancient language of mosaic with South Africa’s complex cultural narrative, Majozi ensures these masters and heroes live not only in memory but in matter. Their stories, cast in resolute form, challenge erasure and claim a permanent space in the national imagination.
