The 2025 FNB Art Prize went to Maseru-based artist Thato Toeba, marking a major milestone in their career and shining a rare spotlight on contemporary art from Lesotho.
Selected from a competitive shortlist, Toeba’s mixed-media practice stood out for its conceptual clarity, formal discipline, and emotional depth. The prize, one of South Africa’s most prestigious art awards, comes with a cash award and a solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2026.
Toeba, born in 1990, works across photomontage, collage, and assemblage. Their pieces often incorporate fragments of text, images, and found material, inviting the viewer to unpack complex questions around memory, identity, power, and belonging. The 2025 jury, comprising Kim Kandan (FNB Art Joburg), Kenneth Montague (Wedge Curatorial Projects, Toronto), as well as Janine Gaëlle Dieudji (Smithsonian National Museum of African Art), praised the work as “quietly forceful,” commending its “coherence, maturity, and restraint.”
The jury for the 2025 FNB Art Prize chose Toeba for his bold vision and distinctive voice, stating:
“Thato Toeba’s practice holds a quiet force. Their use of collage and assemblage is both deliberate and layered, allowing for a visual language that is conceptually clear and materially rich. There is a distinct sense of control in how they handle composition, texture and text, revealing a commitment to process as much as to meaning. What set Toeba apart was the clarity of vision, the formal maturity of the work and the considered pace of their trajectory. In a field of strong nominees, theirs emerged as the most resolved and coherent.”
Although based in Maseru, Toeba’s influence extends across southern Africa, where their work continues to challenge the region’s visual narratives. Unlike many contemporaries who lean into spectacle or rapid commentary, Toeba approaches image-making with care and deliberation. The result is a body of work that resists the flattening effect of global visual culture while maintaining a deeply personal voice.
The Johannesburg Art Gallery exhibition, slated for 2026, will offer a rare chance to encounter Toeba’s work at scale. And for many watching across the continent, the prize does more than celebrate one artist. It marks a critical moment of validation for nuanced, independent African expression.
