More art for hungry eyes goes up in Joburg, created by spatial weaver Bev Butkow.
Johannesburg, South Africa (18 June 2026) – Joburg artist Bev Butkow has a new installation opening on 18 June at the University of Johannesburg.
It’s called Fire my Spirit, and it lives in the foyer of the Keorapetse William Kgositsile Theatre, named after the South African Poet Laureate.
The work is made from layers of painted fabric, ribbon, plastic and organza, all suspended in the foyer space.
As you move through it, colours shift, surfaces overlap and separate, as the artwork responds to light and air. Butkow calls herself a ‘spatial weaver’, and the new work is built around the specific history and feel of the space.
The title comes from a phrase that researcher Dr Uhuru Portia Phalafala found in her study of Kgositsile’s work, ‘Earth my Body, Water my Blood, Air my Breath, Fire my Spirit.’
In the installation, fire is about change rather than destruction, seen in the way colour and light move through the materials as you walk around the piece.
The opening will also include a live poetry performance by Quaz Roodt, responding to the installation and the space, with opening remarks from Dave Mann.
The work was developed through UJ Arts & Culture’s Artist in Residence programme. Pieter Jacobs, Head of UJ Arts & Culture, says the aim is to treat the university’s venues as active cultural spaces where art, poetry and everyday life can meet. The installation itself turns a foyer that most people pass through quickly into a space worth pausing in.
Fire My Spirit opens today, 18 June, at the Keorapetse William Kgositsile Theatre foyer at the University of Johannesburg.
How Debate Is Helping Cape Town Youth Find Their Voice
NSRI's Countrywide Splash of Drowning Prevention Awareness
by 
