Private Walkabout | The Last Straw, From Needle Point to Infinity Point

Private Walkabout | The Last Straw, From Needle Point to Infinity Point

Join us for a private walkabout of The Last Straw, From Needle Point to Infinity Point, an exhibition of Natural and Animal Fibre works, curated and led by VIVIERS, Li Edelkoort and Philip Fimmano.

"The last straw” signals a moment of collective rupture. Has humanity reached a critical point - a limit in the way we treat the Earth, treat one another, value labour, and pull materials apart from their origins, rushing them through systems that no longer serve life? The last straw names this moment: the rupture point where something has to change.

Bringing together both local and international voices, the exhibition is presented in an Art Deco penthouse within the historic Old Mutual Building in Cape Town.

The private walkabout includes a guided sermon, Lamb of God, presented by Li Edelkoort, followed by a glass of Krone MCC and an intimate moment of reflection and conversation.

Proudly supported by Mohair South Africa, Cape Wools SA, Krone and Polo South Africa.

DATE: 17/02/2026

TIME 5:15PM - 6:15PM

VENUE: Mutual Heights Apartment 1101, 14 Darling, Street, Cape Town CBD

TICKETS: R1050,00 pp

Read Below for the full Curatorial Statement:

The Last Straw, From Needle Point to Infinity Point

“The last straw” signals a moment of collective rupture. Has humanity reached a critical point—a limit in the way we treat the Earth, treat one another, value labour,

and pull materials apart from their origins, rushing them through systems that no longer serve life? The last straw names this moment: the rupture point where something has to change. Created by artists, designers, and craftspeople from around the world, the exhibition’s fibre works are grounded in this thinking, but the conversation ripples outward...

Natural fibre feels like the right place to start.

Wool and mohair, alongside alpaca and cashmere, and other responsibly sourced natural fibres, all carry a kind of quiet intelligence. They come from life—from land, climate, and care. They hold time; they carry memories, and they have meaning. They are beholden to hands. When you work with these materials, you can’t rush them—they ask for your attention, your patience, and your respect. In that way, these fibres are no longer textiles alone. They become a line that connects animals to humans, hands to hearts, and the past to the present and into the future...

From the breaking point—the last straw—the exhibition moves toward the needle point. This is the smallest place where change actually happens. A needle pierces, joins, repairs. It’s precise. It’s intimate. It demands one’s presence. The needle point speaks to the labour behind fibre—the herding, shearing, spinning, weaving, knitting, felting, stitching—but it also points to something larger: the idea that transformation doesn’t begin with grand gestures and unkept promises, but with careful ones. We have reached this point. The needle is not seen as an instrument of creation and repair alone, but as a point of convergence: where natural materials meet the maker, where every choice becomes visible... The singular Iconverges with the collective Eye.

We are interested in what happens at these fine points of contact—where our chosen material meets our purest intention. Making becomes a form of care—for humanity, for Mother Nature.

The exhibition’s fibre works are grounded in this thinking, but the conversation ripples outward... The exhibition introduces material thresholds through the inclusion of other contemporary visual artists working with different materials and practices that hold similar values—even if they speak a slightly different visual language. Artists who work with clay, paper, and foraged earth, and who feel deeply connected to the land and the human heart, are considered, as their materials act as thresholds rather than departures.

Paper echoes fibre in its fragility and strength. Clay carries the weight of place—soil and earth. These materials hold the tension between control and collapse, permanence and vulnerability. Together, they expand the fibre conversation into a wider material ecology—one where everything feels made, touched, negotiated, and considered at the point of convergence.

From the needle point, the exhibition opens toward what we think of as the infinity point: the human heart. Borrowed from the idea of heart coherence—the point in the heart where love lives without limit—this isn’t meant as something abstract or unreachable. It’s grounded. It’s felt. It’s about remembering that care, when centred, spirals outward.

This is where craft becomes quietly radical. Not decorative. Not nostalgic. But a way of choosing slowness in a culture of speed. Choosing relationships over extraction. Choosing repair over replacement.

The Last Straw, Needle Point to Infinity Point stands at these thresholds, at this precipice of change—to notice the small gestures, the held materials, the points where something is intentionally joined rather than mindlessly torn apart: a brushstroke as the biggest gesture, clay coiled in communion. It asks what might be possible if we paid attention there. If we let care lead. If we trusted that even the finest thread, held with loving intention, can extend far beyond what we can see. From this rupture emerges the needle point—the site of precision, care, and intentional intervention—extending through our ever-expanding infinity point.