Aesthete Cognizance

Sizwe Khoza is a contemporary South African artist whose work in monotype printmaking, painting, and portraiture has earned him national and international acclaim. Born in Mozambique during the final years of that country’s civil war, he moved with his family to South Africa in 1995, growing up in a context shaped by both displacement and cultural transition. His early experiences between two national identities inform his deep engagement with memory, belonging, and personal history. After completing his schooling, Khoza began intensive art training that would define his lifelong commitment to visual storytelling.  As a student at Nkumbulo Comprehensive School, Khoza attended Saturday classes at Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg, where he first encountered printmaking techniques like monotype and linocut. He graduated from the studio’s complete training program in 2012. In 2013, he was awarded a residency at the William Humphrey Art Gallery in Kimberley under the mentorship of th...

Dark Academia is often described visually: dimly lit libraries, antique wood, worn leather, stacks of books, sepia-toned paper, and ivy creeping in the corners. But beyond the aesthetic, Dark Academia is a mindset, a philosophy of inhabiting interiors as sites of thought, reflection, and curiosity. Its interiors thrive on  thoughtful clutter , the accumulation of objects and books that carry meaning and history. These spaces are not sterile or minimal; they are layered, lived-in, and intellectually generative. At the core of Dark Academia interiors is the belief that  objects are not decoration; they are companions . Every book, notebook, or writing implement tells part of the story of its owner’s mind. A scattering of pens across a desk is not careless; it signals engagement, experimentation, and exploration. The room absorbs the owner’s intellectual rhythms and reflects them back, creating a kind of ambient cognition. Psychology tells us that humans respond to these subtle c...

“Too much” is rarely a neutral phrase. It is usually a correction, a warning, or a signal to stop. In the context of interiors, it often implies a failure of restraint or taste. Yet psychologically, the feeling of “enough” is not measured by quantity, but by satisfaction. What looks excessive from the outside may feel precisely right from within. This gap between external judgment and internal comfort is where many homes lose their authenticity. People reduce, edit, and remove not because something feels wrong to them, but because it might appear wrong to others. In doing so, they often remove the very elements that made the space feel complete. The Psychology of Sufficiency vs. Restraint Restraint is often framed as maturity. Sufficiency, however, is about meeting needs. Psychologically, these are not the same. A restrained space may look calm, but it does not automatically feel regulating. If it lacks the objects that support emotional grounding, books, layers, and familiar textures,...

Walls are often treated as boundaries rather than participants. In many modern interiors, they are left bare, painted neutral, and asked to disappear. This absence is frequently framed as calm or sophistication, yet it can leave a space feeling exposed. When walls hold nothing, rooms can feel unfinished, as though they are waiting rather than welcoming. Objects on walls change this dynamic. Art, photographs, shelves, and collected pieces transform walls from passive surfaces into active companions. They create a sense of enclosure that goes beyond structure. A space begins to feel held, not because it is smaller, but because it is visually and emotionally supported. This feeling of being held is subtle but powerful. It speaks to comfort, safety, and belonging. When walls participate in the life of a room, they stop being edges and start becoming part of the experience. Why Empty Walls Can Feel Unsettling Empty walls are often praised for their restraint. However, restraint does not alw...

Balekane Legoabe (born 1995) is a prominent South African visual artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans digital and traditional media, including digital collage, print, painting, ink drawing, and mixed media. She is also an illustrator, motion designer, curator, and arts educator based in Johannesburg, South Africa, whose work engages deeply with emotional experience, identity, and the natural world. Legoabe earned a Bachelor of Arts in Visual Communication with a specialisation in illustration and a Bachelor of Arts in Film Arts specialising in motion and stop‑motion design from the Open Window Institute between 2014 and 2018. Her academic grounding in both visual communication and film arts informs her fluid use of layered imagery and narrative structures in her work.  Legoabe’s artistic formation began at The National School of the Arts, where she matriculated in 2013, specialising in visual arts, laying the groundwork for her later explorations in both digital and tactil...

Maximalism is often misunderstood as excess for its own sake. The term brings to mind overwhelming colour, crowded rooms, and visual noise that leaves no place for the eye to rest. Yet curated maximalism operates on an entirely different principle. It is not about having more, but about  choosing with care  and allowing abundance to exist with intention. In curated maximalism, fullness is not chaotic. Objects are layered thoughtfully, not randomly. The result is a space that feels rich rather than restless, expressive rather than exhausting. When done well, abundance becomes grounding, offering stability, comfort, and a strong sense of identity. This approach challenges the long-standing belief that calm comes from reduction. Instead, it proposes that calm can also come from familiarity, density, and meaning. A curated maximalist home does not ask occupants to strip themselves down, but to settle in. Moving Beyond the Fear of “Too Much” Design culture has conditioned many peop...