Event poster for "Voices of the Unheard" at Goodman Gallery in Parkwood, Johannesburg, on February 28, 2026, from 10 am to 6 pm, with TEDx Johannesburg logo at the top.
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Voices of the Unheard

Saturday, 28 February 2026 | 10:00-18:00 | Goodman Gallery, Rosebank

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Art, research, cultural exploration, surrealism, spirituality, and the search for existence all opened pathways into TEDxJohannesburg Salon: Voices of the Unheard. We sought to question what was hidden, misunderstood, unheard, or repressed, drawing on theoretical concepts and the aesthetics of negative emotions, as Sianne Ngai writes. Through these expressions, writers, researchers, professors, and artists uncovered silenced truths and invited us to look beyond convention.

This theme also spoke directly to Johannesburg: a city of layers and contradictions, where histories of displacement and struggle sat alongside immense creative force. Its energy was both fractured and vibrant, demanding that we uncover, unearth, and rediscover the voices that shaped it. In doing so, we returned to something raw and deeply human.

The TEDxJohannesburg Youth Team hosted a day where ideas, art, and theory converged. The programme unfolded in separate sessions. Within each session, three to four speakers shared the stage with a performer—be it music, poetry, or another unexpected expression—each offering seven to fifteen minutes of curated insight or artistry. Between sessions, the space transformed into part of the experience, through immersive works that invited guests to wander, contemplate, and participate. The format was created to cultivate intimacy and resonance, drawing the audience nearer to the ideas, the art, and to one another through curated dialogues and shared explorations.

We made space for voices that challenged what was overlooked, unheard, or ignored.

Scroll down for the TEDxJohannesburgSalon: Voices of the Unheard speakers.

Because ideas change everything.

Voices of the Unheard

Saturday, 28 February 2026 | 10:00-18:00 | Goodman Gallery, Rosebank

A woman wearing elaborate jewelry and a headwrap, holding a matching jewelry piece against a dark background.

Buhlebendalo

  • Philanthropist, storyteller, healer, visionary, a chosen vessel from the gods - are a few words to describe the vocal prowess that is Buhlebendalo. The stage is Buhlebendalo's safest place. When her feet start tapping to the beat of a drum, it is as though the heavens are clapping in jubilation.

Black and white portrait of a man with short curly hair, wearing earrings, a leather jacket, and a serious expression.

Desire Marea

  • Desire Marea is a performance artist, experimental musician, actor, painter and writer and sangoma. His practice interrogates and embodies the multiplicity of black being. He asks the question: What does it mean to be? He identifies as Isimakade.

A black and white close-up of a man wearing sunglasses, a chain necklace, and a textured sweater, outdoors with a house and trees in the background.

ByLwansta

  • ByLwansta is a South African artist-entrepreneur and cultural producer. His work spans music, design, curation, and infrastructure building. He is driven by a simple philosophy: creating the things he wishes existed. His work prioritises storytelling, world-building, and long-term cultural infrastructure over monetary visibility.

Black and white portrait of a woman with shoulder-length hair, wearing a white blazer and shirt, looking confidently at the camera.

Anna Reverdy

  • Anna Reverdy is a cultural entrepreneur, studio, and artist manager. Anna is known for building bridges across artistic communities and leading projects that connect practices with diverse audiences and stakeholders.

Black and white portrait of a woman with braided hair, wearing hoop earrings, a patterned scarf, and a buttoned jacket, looking directly at the camera.

Mbali Dhlamini

  • Dhlamini performs visual, tactile and discursive investigations into current indigenous cultural practices. Working to maintain a state of unlearning and relearning, Dhlamini's process recognises language as a medium of understanding and as a repository of knowledge.

Black and white photo of a man with a beard and shaved head, wearing a leather jacket, sitting against a plain wall.

Thando Phenyane

  • Thando Phenyane's work examines how identity, space and power shape the Black psyche. His practice is conceptually grounded in Frantz Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks, using the idea of the "mask" as a metaphor for the psychological, social and spatial adjustments Black people are compelled to make in order to survive within inherited systems of power.

Black and white portrait of a woman wearing a headwrap and large hoop earrings, looking confidently to the side against a textured backdrop.

Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika

  • Relebone Rirhandzu eAfrika is a small-town girl who relishes getting lost in the city. She is a writer, mental health advocate, and philanthropist who writes on a variety of topics, including gender, music, culture and spatial politics. 

A young woman with voluminous curly hair wearing a sports jersey and hoop earrings poses in a room with a shelf, glasses, and a plant in the background.

Thando Zide

  • With a voice that carries both depth and nostalgia, musician Thando Zide is shaping a new sonic landscape where contemporary R&B, Jazz and African soul intertwine seamlessly. 

Black and white photo of a person with short hair, wearing a textured jacket and rings, standing outdoors in front of a building with brick walls.

mpho ndaba

  • mpho ndaba is a writer, business strategist, producer, and transdisciplinary scholar. mpho's intellectual inquiries sit at the intersections of Black Studies, Black Planetary Studies, Environmental Humanities Critical Queer Studies, Black Sonic Studies, Critical Urban Studies, and Change Leadership. At the core of mpho's thinking, life is a sustained inquiry around the historical processes that inaugurated alienation in Black psychic life.

A woman with dark hair and bangs smiling while leaning against a wall, wearing a button-up dress and a beaded necklace, in black and white.

Sarah Delius

  • Dr Sarah Delius is a political scientist and historian in the New South Institute’s Histories of Governance programme and a research fellow in the History Department at the University of Johannesburg. Her work explores how institutions such as marriage and slavery — shaped by the Atlantic slave trade, colonial rule, and shifting global orders — structured gender relations, labour systems, and political authority in Sierra Leone from the late nineteenth century through the civil war.

Black and white portrait of a young man with glasses, beard, and wavy hair, standing outdoors with trees in the background.

David Mann

  • David Mann is an award-winning author, editor and art critic. He currently works as the writer and for the arts incubator, The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and is a co-founder of the Johannesburg-based arts writing collective, Writers' Block.

A man with glasses and a cap playing drums outdoors in black and white.

Tumi Mogorosi

  • Percussionist, scholar, composer, and activist Tumi Mogorosi is in the vanguard of the South African music and cultural scene's burgeoning outernational dimension. He took the drummer's chair in multiple boundary-pushing formations. Driven by activist urgency and a large-scale creative vision, Mogorosi explores musical motives and improvisation to create modal grooves rooted in spiritual jazz and hard bop, working toward a sound that celebrates collective expression.

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