In the Spotlight: FNB Art Prize winner Thato Toeba

In this episode, as we enter September, the traditional arts & culture month in Johannesburg, we bring you an art conversation. Recently, the recipient of the 2025 FNB Art Prize was announced. The prestigious annual prize – which comes with a hundred thousand rands, exhibition space at FNB Art Joburg and a solo show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery – has been awarded to Thato Toeba, a Lesotho national just five years into their art career. Toeba’s interest in the social sciences, identity, power, justice, history, and share of voice, informs their mixed media photomontage and assemblage. In selecting Toeba as this year’s recipient, the jury recognised their work as exuding a quiet force, deployed with clarity and rich materiality, which demonstrated as much commitment to process as to meaning. In our recent conversation, we spoke about how they came from being a practising lawyer, studying towards a PHD, to bagging one of the continent’s most desirable art prize. We spoke about the Lesotho of their formative years; corruption; how they developed their practice from a photography habit and an organic childhood flair for collage and what is still to come from an extraordinary talent. Enjoy. Remember to like, subscribe, share, and talk about the podcast, so our work can reach as many of you as possible. You can find us on Iono, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. We are @wantedonlinesa on the socials, and we update wantedonlinesa.co.za daily.