RMB Latitudes Art Fair

Be part of RMB Latitudes Art Fair 2027

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

RMB Latitudes 2027 Theme: MAY OUR WAYS BE ILLUMINATED

Last year, Oasis asked us to gather. In 2027, as RMB Latitudes Art Fair enters its fifth year, we turn our attention towards what comes next.

May Our Ways Be Illuminated draws on the isiXhosa phrase Zikhany’ izindlela. It is an invocation rather than a declaration: a hope that we might see more clearly where we have come from, where we find ourselves now, and what might still be possible.

The idea of illumination connects to an older human relationship with the sky. Across cultures, stars have been used to navigate, mark time and seasons, tell stories and understand our place in the world. We look to them not because they tell us exactly where to go, but because they help us locate ourselves. They offer orientation.

This finds particular resonance in Ghana in 2027. Seventy years after Ghana gained independence in 1957, the country takes centre stage as RMB Latitudes’ 2027 International Focus, part of an annual programme building relationships between artists,
galleries, curators and audiences across the continent. At the centre of Ghana’s flag sits the five-pointed Black Star, an enduring symbol of Ghanaian independence and the Pan-African aspirations that accompanied it.

As RMB Latitudes simultaneously marks its fifth edition, the Black Star becomes a navigational device for the Fair. It carries both history and futurity: rooted in a particular political moment while continuing to represent the impulse to imagine beyond the conditions of the present.

For RMB Latitudes, the Black Star is not a destination, nor a symbol whose meaning we seek to claim. It is a point of orientation through which we might consider our relationship to the past, to one another, to the places we inhabit and to futures still being imagined.

A star does not tell us where to go. It helps us find our bearings.

BELONG · BE SEEN · PLACE · IMAGINE · UHURU

The five points of the star open onto five interconnected ideas that will guide the Fair:

Belong asks where, and to whom, we belong: how communities are made, identities negotiated and space made for one another across difference.

Be Seen considers visibility: whose work, histories and experiences enter the frame, and how artists can bring into view what has been overlooked or obscured.

Place considers how land, water, architecture, ecology, memory and movement shape the ways we inhabit the world. Johannesburg is not simply the backdrop to RMB Latitudes, but part of its material.

Imagine turns towards what does not yet exist. Artists speculate, dream and propose, allowing us to encounter possibilities before they become realities.

Uhuru - the Swahili word for freedom or independence - returns us to the histories embedded in the Black Star. It asks how the meaning of freedom changes across generations: what has been inherited, what has been achieved and what remains to be
imagined.

These are not prescriptive themes for exhibitors or artists. They are points of orientation that may surface differently through artworks, special projects, talks, performances, music and encounters with Johannesburg.

At the heart of this framework is a belief in art as a space for speculation and possibility: a way to look again at what we have inherited, see the present differently and imagine what might come next.

As RMB Latitudes turns five, we look towards that horizon not to prescribe what should come next, but to create space for many possibilities to be imagined.

There is no single way forward. May our ways be illuminated.