RMB Latitudes Art Fair

RMB Latitudes Art Fair returns to Shepstone Gardens, Johannesburg, from 21–23 May 2027 for its fifth edition, reaffirming its position as a leading platform for contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. Known for its distinctive model prioritising exchange, sustainability and long-term visibility, the Fair brings together artists, galleries and cultural partners in a setting that encourages meaningful engagement with art.

Brought to you by the team behind Latitudes Online, and in partnership with Rand Merchant Bank, the fair offers visitors a unique art experience that brings together the art community from across the continent and diaspora.

Set within the historic terraced gardens and architecture of Shepstone Gardens, RMB Latitudes offers an immersive alternative to conventional art fair formats. Carefully designed indoor and outdoor exhibition spaces combine the intimacy of a curated show with the professional standards and museum-grade presentation expected of major international fairs.

This balance between intimacy and rigour has become a defining feature of RMB Latitudes, combining an oasis-like experience with the credibility and commercial strength of a global art fair.

“The art fair seems to go from strength to strength and may soon be challenging the big boys of the African fair circuit.” - Wanted Magazine

The theme for 2027

Not Yet Uhuru
What will we make of our freedom?

Last year, our theme Oasis asked us to gather. In 2027, RMB Latitudes Art Fair enters its fifth year, an important moment to reflect on what the fair has built and where it might go next. For this fifth edition, we ask: what comes after gathering?

Not Yet Uhuru takes its title from Letta Mbulu’s liberation-era song and from uhuru, the Swahili word for freedom or independence. Across the continent, the word came to express a larger Pan-African hope for self-determination and a better future.

More than thirty years into South Africa’s democracy, we return to freedom not simply as a historical moment, but as something lived and continually made. Freedom is something we inherit, but also something each generation must decide what to do with. What will we make of it now? How do we create greater belonging and opportunity? What histories do we carry forward? How do we care for the places we share? And what futures might artists help us imagine?

With Ghana as the 2027 country focus, this conversation extends naturally across the continent. In 1957, Ghana became the first sub-Saharan African colony to gain independence. The Black Star, an enduring symbol of Ghanaian independence and Pan-African possibility, becomes the visual and conceptual device for the fair’s fifth edition. Its five points also speak directly to five years of RMB Latitudes Art Fair, opening onto five interconnected themes explored through our special projects: Belong, Remember, Be Seen, Place and Imagine.

These are not prescriptive themes for exhibitors or artists. They are invitations to conversation that will surface across the art, special projects, talks, performances, music and encounters with Johannesburg.

Not Yet Uhuru is hopeful without being complacent. It does not ask us to return to the divisions of the past. Rather, it recognises that freedom is not a finished state. It is an exercise in futurity. It is something each generation continues to practise, expand and imagine.

Artists have a particular role in this conversation. They allow us to look again at what we have inherited, make visible what has been overlooked, see the present differently and imagine possibilities that do not yet exist.

What will we make of our freedom?