Lemkus Gallery is excited to announce its first duo residency between Aaron Philander and Smiso Cele, an ambitious attempt to allow promising young artists to practice in community. 

Aaron Philander (b. 2002) is a Cape Town based artist sculptor working primarily with timber and found objects. Since his graduation from the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2024, Philander has earned a strong reputation for his ability to transform discarded yet powerfully charged household articles into poetic assemblages that reflect intimately on questions of self,family and collective memory. His works trouble the tension of racial inhabitation in the aftermath of apartheid and offer a unique generational perspective on the ways oppressive structures can be traced psychologically and materially. 

Notable solo exhibitions include Nana's Kitchen at AVA Gallery in 2025 and Jack in the Box as a part of Everard Read’s Cubicle Series in 2026. 

Smiso Cele (b. Port Shepstone, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa) is Johannesburg-based artist with a distinct and exciting visual language. Like Philander, Cele has a strong propensity for timber-based sculptural work and is similarly interested in the relationship between domestic spaces and the public domain. His work takes seriously the problem of space inherent in an injured South Africa, and uses the allegory of a common bedroom to convey the extent of unfinished structural progress. 

He is the recipient of the 2025 Cassirer Welz Award and subsequent Bag Factory residency. Significant solo presentations include Of Place and the Uncertain (2024) and Ngiyiboneleni? (2025). 

For his upcoming residency project, Aaron is interested in broadening his reference pool through research and dialogue, finding new discursive tools to frame his practice, and experimenting with new forms of material treatment and kinesis. 

Smiso hopes to extend his ongoing project, Ebhuqwini, which uses shovels to explore the familial legacy of gardening inspired by his father’s vocation of two decades.