Warren Maroon named emerging artist of the year

Cape Town sculptor Warren Maroon has been named the recipient of the 2026 Investec Emerging Artist Award at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair. His intricate wall work, Rising Sun (2025), was recognised for its quiet intensity and conceptual precision.

The award, presented during the fair’s 13th edition running from 20 to 22 February at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, forms part of the fair’s broader mission to elevate early-career South African artists onto a wider international stage. Alongside a cash prize, the honour offers increased visibility among the global network of collectors, curators and galleries that converge annually in Cape Town.

Maroon was represented by Everard Read Gallery. 

Rising Sun is a large-scale wall piece constructed from glass, matchsticks and balsa wood. The jury praised the work for transforming a familiar South African visual reference into a contemporary object that balances meticulous craft with a palpable sense of fragility and risk. Judges highlighted the work’s conceptual clarity and disciplined execution, describing it as evidence of a practice ready for broader international attention.

From a distance, Rising Sun reads as ornamental and almost meditative: repeating floral-like forms arranged with careful symmetry. Up close, the material reality asserts itself. Matchsticks and shards of glass introduce tension beneath the surface calm, reframing the work as something more precarious.

“In many ways, it embodies a kind of collective experience,” Maroon said. “I think everyone deserves a pat on the back simply for navigating the world without setting it alight. There’s a serenity you have to cultivate in order to remain intact and functioning. From a distance, the work appears calm and meditative. But as you move closer that sense of ease unravels as you realise it’s made of matchsticks and shards of glass, materials that are inherently unstable and capable of causing harm.”

The Investec Emerging Artist Award, established to recognise South African artists who have yet to stage a solo museum presentation or international solo exhibition, drew 31 submissions this year, underscoring the depth of the country’s contemporary art pipeline. Works were assessed for originality, artistic vision, technical execution and long-term potential by a jury that included Investec South Africa CEO Cumesh Moodliar alongside art and investment specialists.

Moodliar noted the work’s lingering impact. “I found myself returning to Warren Maroon’s winning work long after we’d seen it,” he said. “He takes a familiar, domestic pattern, as humble as a doily and reimagines it in matchsticks and broken glass. It’s beautiful at first glance but edged with fragility, heat and risk, and that tension is exactly what gives the work its clarity.”

The recognition arrives as the 2026 fair unfolds under the curatorial theme “Listen”, described by organisers as the most ambitious edition to date, featuring 126 exhibitors from 34 international cities and more than 490 artists. Within that crowded global field, Maroon’s materially modest but conceptually charged work stands out as a reminder that scale in contemporary art is often less about size than about pressure, precision and the ability to hold contradiction in a single frame.