The 2023 exhibition If You Look Hard Enough, You Can See Our Future brought 62 works by 55 South African artists to the African American Museum in Dallas.
Curated by Laurie Ann Farrell, the exhibition drew from the Nando’s Art Collection and marked the first North American presentation of many works and emerging artists.
Portraiture, landscape and abstraction across generations
The selection included photography by Zanele Muholi, painting by Portia Zvavahera and work by William Kentridge, David Goldblatt, Claudette Schreuders, Kagiso Patrick Mautloa, Igshaan Adams and Penny Siopis.
Mbongeni Buthelezi contributed portraits made from melted plastic collected and repurposed from waste.
Other participants included Stephen Hobbs, Vivien Kohler, Anastasia Pather, Clyde van den Berg and Samson Mnisi.
The exhibition moved between personal identity, urban life, landscape and the political histories shaping South African society.
A restaurant collection entering a museum
The Nando’s Art Collection had grown to more than 25,000 works under businessman and collector Dick Enthoven.
The Spier Arts Trust managed the collection and supported artists through acquisition and display.
Although many works had appeared in restaurant interiors, the Dallas exhibition placed them within a museum and allowed them to be considered together as a curatorial statement.
The display was extended through the State Fair of Texas after attracting strong attendance.
If You Look Hard Enough demonstrated the possibilities and tensions of a corporate collection. Private purchasing had provided sustained support to artists, while the museum presentation created a more serious public context than commercial interiors could offer.
The exhibition’s scale revealed contemporary South African art as a field of distinct voices rather than a single national style.