The Stellenbosch Triennale is the brainchild of the Stellenbosch Outdoor Sculpture Trust and it’s years of experience in enacting public art exhibitions in Stellenbosch. The Triennale takes public art in Stellenbosch to new heights in terms of it’s international reach, the scope and variety of the art to be showcased as well as it’s intention to place creativity in critical dialogue with society. The Triennale marks an intentional and purposeful attempt to use creativity, imagination and public space as a meeting point in engaging with the collective and distinctive milieu of our past, present and future existence and all it’s complexities- a place where we imagine futures.

The Triennale aims to make Stellenbosch the primary destination of multi-disciplinary art in Africa by tapping into the creative impetus that is reverberating across the continent. The Triennale turns Stellenbosch into a curated public laboratory for creative expressions and engagements in response to society’s question’s now, then and there; what kind of people do we want to be? What relations to nature do we cherish? What knowledges and technologies do we deem appropriate? What aesthetic values do we hold? The Stellenbosch Triennale holds great promise of interesting horizons of possibility and shifts for the town of Stellenbosch and beyond.

The Stellenbosch Triennale emerges within a creative cultural renaissance in South Africa that has seen new public and private art institutions take shape with the Zeitz-MOCAA and the Norval Foundation in Cape Town and the Javett Art Centre in Pretoria being welcome additions. The Stellenbosch Triennale pulls threads from this existing ecosystem as well as adding to it by offering a different location that seeks to use the Triennale as a vehicle to re-imagine Stellenbosch as a creative city. Stellenbosch is internationally renowned for its natural beauty, history, culture, wine and educational institutions which have made it one of South Africa’s premier destinations.

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