05/03/2026
Our Founding Director and Chief Design Officer, Gabriel Mothibedi had the pleasure of visiting Botswana’s distinguished artist Wilsonngoni art’s “I” solo exhibition at the Botswana National Museum alongside his 2nd and 5th year Bachelor of Industrial Design students from the Faculty of Design and Built Environment, at the University of Botswana_Official.
The visit provided a unique opportunity for Mr Wilson Ngoni to personally curate and narrate the works, offering the students direct insight into both the artistic intent and the broader cultural context of the exhibition. More importantly, it allowed us to examine the enduring dialogue between art and design across
major movements, from the Victorian era and the Arts and Crafts movement to African Art, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Bauhaus, Modernism, Mid-Century Modern, and Postmodernism, as well as Impressionism, Futurism, Cubism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, Realism, and Constructivism, which the students have studied and critically examined in their courses on Concepts of Design and the History of Art and Design.
The engagement further enabled an exploration of how these philosophies, principles, and visual languages are embodied within semiotics and product semantics, and how they continue to inform contemporary practices in visual communication, information design, consumer product design and engineering.
Particular emphasis was placed on the roles of form, purpose, meaning, structure, symbolism, and narrative within the design practice, and on how these elements may contribute to preserving Botswana’s inherent cultural traits and indigenous knowledge systems in the conceptualisation and development of locally grounded products.
Gabriel Mothibedi
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