If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Our Future:

Selections of Contemporary South African Art from the Nando’s Art Collection

Stephen Hobbs. If You Look Hard Enough, 2014. Letraset, aquatint and drypoint. Photo courtesy of the artist and David Krut Projects.

If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Our Future highlights work from the Nando’s collection that was created in South Africa between 1948 and 2020. This exhibition underscores the collection’s extensive holdings in portraiture, cityscapes, landscapes, and abstraction. The artwork on view shapes an understanding of the South African milieu and its transformation over the last seventy years. They also offer insight into multi-generational views on life and placemaking.  

The paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and photography serve as visual documentation of forgotten images and histories in much the same way a journalist records and transmits stories to a reader. While they are bound by a specific time and place, they chronicle universal issues that touch us all: love, loss and the hope for a better future.

The title of the exhibition comes from the text on one of the pieces, If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Your Future, by artist Stephen Hobbs. But the future doesn’t belong to any single one of us. As viewers immerse themselves in distinctly South African aesthetics, we invite you to envision your own place within our collective future, both informed by and reflecting on our shared humanity.