Painted on lace: The young South African artist taking Paris by storm

South African artist Buqaqawuli Nobakada is making her mark in Paris.

Instead of canvas, she paints on lace.

And her first solo exhibition in France is now on view in one of the world’s art capitals.

Buqaqawuli Nobakada’s exhibition, Our Dreams Began to Chase Us Back, opened on Monday, 19 October, at Galerie Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris’s 8th arrondissement.

It runs until 19 December 2026.

🇿🇦 Buqaqawuli Nobakada paints Black women’s dreams on her grandmother’s lace curtains, now she has her first solo show in Paris

📍Galerie Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr pic.twitter.com/JgMKhaRRJh

— Horde (@wearehorde_)

October 22, 2026

WHAT’S IN BUQAQAWULI NOBAKADA’S PARIS SHOW?

The exhibition presents six new works.

It’s curated by Destinee Ross-Sutton, and presented by Ross-Sutton Gallery in partnership with Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr.

The show opened during Art Basel Paris 2026, a major international art fair week.

PAINTING ON LACE

Nobakada, sometimes called “The Lace Lady”, paints with acrylic on hand-prepared lace.

The texture of the lace flows through the figures, clothing and interiors in her paintings.

Her work portrays Black women in moments of dance, rest and togetherness, in lush gardens, beside pools and in elegant interiors, rather than in stories of struggle or trauma.

According to her gallery biography, she centres hyper-femininity as a space of power and self-determination, affirming that Black women belong in spaces of grandeur and shape their own futures.

FROM WITS TO THE WORLD STAGE

Nobakada was born in 2000, and studied Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg.

Her work has quickly gained international attention. In 2025, she held a solo exhibition at the Albany Museum of Art in the US state of Georgia, and showed at the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London.

In 2026, her work has also appeared at EXPO CHICAGO and in group exhibitions in South Africa and abroad.

CAN YOU SEE THE EXHIBITION?

Our Dreams Began to Chase Us Back is on view at Galerie Pierre Cornette de Saint Cyr, 29 avenue Franklin-D.-Roosevelt, Paris, until 19 December 2026.

WHICH SOUTH AFRICAN ARTISTS DO YOU THINK DESERVE MORE INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION?

Let us know in the comments below…