The art of progress: Visual artists reflect on South Africa’s HIV and TB journey

At Constitution Hill’s Women’s Jail, the exhibition Zero is Greater brings South Africa’s HIV and TB history into conversation with art, science and the unfinished work of improving access to healthcare. Photographs from its opening night capture the artists reflecting on the lives, losses and possibilities behind the public-health statistics. SPONSORED CONTENT The Women’s Jail at Constitution Hill is a place where the country’s history of exclusion and its struggle for justice remain tangible. It now houses Zero is Greater, an exhibition presented by Constitution Hill in partnership with the Gates Foundation. The setting is deliberate: South Africa’s response to HIV and TB is also a story of rights, unequal access, collective action and change that has taken decades to achieve. South Africa has made substantial progress against both diseases through treatment, testing, research, activism and public-health programmes. Those gains, however, are neither complete nor equally experienced. HIV and TB continue to affect families and communities, and a scientific advance means little to someone who cannot reach the services they need. The exhibition moves between what has already changed and what could come next. Alongside the art are examples of HIV prevention options, TB vaccine research, new approaches to diagnosis and support for people starting or remaining on treatment. Some tools are established; others are still being studied. The common thread is that medicines and technologies matter most when health workers, communities, and functioning services can bring them into people’s lives. The seven commissioned artists do something different from the scientists and health workers whose efforts are featured in the exhibition. They consider what health statistics cannot easily convey: grief that remains present, care that holds communities together, the indignity of stigma, and the everyday freedoms that better health services can protect. Their work does not offer a single answer to what “zero” means. The photographs below follow the artists and guests through the exhibition. Together, they offer a view of the HIV and TB response that makes room for both its achievements and what remains to be done. Zero is Greater is showing at the Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, until 13 November 2026. Register for a guided tour here. THE PHOTOS 1. Artists Dr Ayobola Kekere-Ekun (left) and Siyababa Mtshali (right), with Sicelo Nene behind them, entering Zero is Greater at the Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill, on 17 October 2026. The exhibition places South Africa’s HIV and TB response alongside displays documenting the experiences of imprisoned women, connecting health with dignity, rights and the freedom to imagine a different future. 2. The exhibition’s artists encounter one another’s work. From left: Serai Lobelo, Lebogang “Mogul” Mabusela, Sicelo Nene, Siyababa Mtshali and Dr Ayobola Kekere-Ekun during a walk-through. The artists were commissioned to bring their own perspectives to the subject rather than illustrate medical interventions or deliver a single institutional message. 3. Pretoria-based artist Lebogang “Mogul” Mabusela discusses Tell Me Baby, Are You Winning? with fellow artists. Drawing on football, the work considers the many people whose contributions shape the HIV and TB response: no one player can carry the match. Her other works, Pinot Noir and Old Gays, make space for pleasure, intimacy and ageing in conversations too often dominated by illness and mortality. 4. Cape Town painter Amy-Leigh Braaf introduces A Refracted Ghost that Sang. Informed by her Cape Malay and Indonesian heritage, the work approaches remembrance through colour, imagery and personal history. It asks viewers to look beyond the scale of the epidemics and consider the individuals, memories and cultural worlds that statistics cannot hold. 5. Johannesburg artist Sicelo Nene speaks beside The Queen, The Angel and Death. Together with The King, The Angel and Death, the work places dignity, care and mortality in the same frame. The royal figures resist reducing people affected by HIV and TB to their diagnoses, while the presence of death acknowledges the losses that continue despite advances in prevention and treatment. 6. Dr Ayobola Kekere-Ekun contributes Tug of War, a textile work in which folds and changing colour suggest the tension between loss and possibility. Its title captures a familiar truth about public health: progress is neither automatic nor uninterrupted and must be sustained through research, access to treatment and the often less visible work of care. 7. Siyababa Mtshali draws on fashion, sculpture and performance in Magalela 2026 and Induku: 4KOF. By reworking symbols associated with protection and masculinity, his practice opens a conversation about vulnerability and the expectations placed on men. This is particularly relevant to an HIV response in which stigma and ideas about masculinity can influence whether people seek care. Mtshali is pictured at the opening on the right. 8. Serai Lobelo’s MMM (Maso, Manyalo, Mekete) takes an ordinary plastic plate, familiar from funerals, weddings and other community gatherings, as its starting point. The object carries memories of mourning, celebration and the people who show up for one another. Lobelo’s work directs attention to forms of solidarity that have sustained communities through the HIV epidemic, often outside formal healthcare settings. 9. Poet Lebo Mashile (left) hosted the opening night programme on 17 October, while Amahle Jaxa (right) moderated a conversation on intergenerational activism and HIV stigma. Their participation brought different generations and forms of public storytelling into a discussion too often confined to clinical or policy language. 10. Artists and guests gather after the opening of Zero is Greater. The exhibition is less a declaration that the HIV and TB response has reached its destination than a reflection on who made progress possible, whose needs remain unmet and what South Africans might yet achieve together. ABOUT THE ARTISTS Dr Ayobola “Zak” Kekere-Ekun Tug of War Born in Lagos and based in South Africa, Kekere-Ekun holds a PhD in Art and Design from the University of Johannesburg and won the Absa L’Atelier Award in 2021. She builds sculptural surfaces from paper and fabric. In Tug of War, folded textiles shift from pale tones into colour, capturing the uneasy balance between loss and possibility, and the roles of research, treatment, access and care in changing lives. Lebogang “Mogul” Mabusela Are You Winning? · Pinot Noir · Old Gays A Pretoria-based printmaker, collage artist and zine-maker, and a Wits School of Arts graduate. Are You Winning? imagines the HIV and TB response as a collective football effort, while Pinot Noir and Old Gays show older people living with freedom, connection and desire, challenging narrow assumptions about health and age. Amy-Leigh Braaf A Refracted Ghost that Sang A Cape Town-based painter whose work draws on her Cape Malay and Indonesian heritage, with residencies in Japan and Bali. Her contribution makes space for presence, remembrance and the human lives behind the country’s HIV and TB history. Siyababa Mtshali Magalela 2026 · Induku: 4KOF Originally from KwaZulu-Natal, Mtshali founded Siyababa Atelier, a fashion and performance practice. Working across garments, sculpture and performance, he reworks symbols of protection and strength to explore vulnerability, manhood and HIV-related stigma, suggesting that softness can be a form of resistance. Sicelo Nene The Queen, The Angel and Death · The King, The Angel and Death A Johannesburg-based artist rooted in Alexandra, working in portraiture, documentary photography and mixed media. His two compositions honour people affected by HIV and TB, using royal figures for dignity, an angel for care and death for continuing loss. Serai Lobelo MMM (Maso, Manyalo, Mekete) An interdisciplinary artist and creative director drawing on Basarwa heritage and Sotho-Tswana cultural memory. His work uses the plastic plate, a fixture of mourning, marriage and celebration, to trace a journey from loss to connection and to ask who carries us forward. Lazi Mathebula Prevention Is Better Than Cure An Alexandra-raised artist and illustrator whose comic-inspired portraits draw on characters from Soul City to reconnect audiences with community-based HIV and TB education. Curator, Constitution Hill / Multidisciplinary artist