Thato Toeba wants to talk about truths. Their mouth lifts into a slight smile as they recall a childhood memory from home in Maseru, Lesotho. Hunched over a black Croxley exercise book with their twin sister, cutting and pasting images from catalogues and magazines: a fridge here, a bed there, a lamp casting imagined shadows on paper walls. Piece by piece, they built a delicate 2D dollhouse world, complete with elaborate storylines and explanations.

That instinct to slice, rearrange and reimagine lives in Toeba’s work today. Through photomontage and assemblage, they unpick the truths we inherit, the ones we’re sold, the images we’re taught to trust. They reconstruct tangled stories of power, identity, memory and contradiction. The result is as visually seductive as it is conceptually charged, a clarity of vision that earned the Basotho multi-media artist the 2025 FNB Art Joburg Prize.

Prior to their foray into art five years ago, Toeba was pursuing a PhD in law, a field that holds much similarity to that of images. “There's [perceived] objectivity attached to the law and to images. They both purport to present a certain kind of truth.” Collage then became their language of freedom, a way to think in images. “I never wanted to say anything,” they admit. “I just wanted to see if these images could be as compelling as an essay.”

Each image functions like a word, and each arrangement like a sentence. Using archives, history, and magazines, especially old National Geographic issues, sourced through donations, online or picked up from charity shops in Cape Town and Amsterdam, Toeba edits and rewrites visual narratives, teasing out what’s depicted versus what actually makes the artwork. Documentary images, in particular, draw them in: moments captured, events reported, the way images shape understanding. During their Rijksakademie residency, Toeba also became fascinated by the spaces in between, the gaps we often overlook. “I was imagining what it might be like to flow out of [those gaps],” they say. Between the frames lies memory, possibility, tension.

Toeba treats images as malleable material for juxtaposition capable of carrying both historical truth and the hindsight of narrative construction. ‘Ntja tse mafura li a tla (2024)’ and ‘Ka ha ka ka mona ha se ka mantloaneng (2022)’ invite viewers to lose themselves in every layer. The works are porous, textured surfaces alive with tenderness and hardship.

Collages such as these blur the lines between fact and fiction, between what is remembered and what is made up. “I tend to believe conspiracy theories over so-called truths,” they admit with a laugh. That curiosity extends to AI and the manipulation of images. “Going through academia and legal practice I realised that life is about making up stories. The person with the most ‘believable’ story usually has the most power,” they reflect, tying it to the current media narratives of Palestine. In their collages, Toeba’s goal is to blend images so seamlessly that they could be considered part of conspiracy theory.

As a child, Toeba was fearless and playful. They were the one allowed to roam, climb trees, ride horses - free to be themselves in ways their four other sisters were not. “I was very playful and very stout (naughty), very creative,” Toeba says. “I was a forward child, allowed to get away with a lot that other people were not.” It’s this love for play and boundary testing that informs how they approach information now. “We’re fed information and we kind of have to believe it as it’s given to us,” they say. Yet Toeba doesn’t take things at face value. “Even the instinct of making my [work now] comes from playing,” they explain. At 35, Toeba sees clearly how that drive shaped their work. “It’s grown tremendously. It’s kind of a miracle.”

What sets Toeba apart, beyond their technical precision and conceptual clarity, is their unflinching, childlike curiosity. They ask questions relentlessly and stomp their feet, insisting on every version of fact. “The root of something cannot be revealed without conversation,” they add. Their work doesn’t aim to resolve history but to open it up, create space for alternate readings and overlooked stories.

As part of the FNB Art Joburg prize, Toeba will stage their solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2026, where they plan to cast the city of Johannesburg in the interrogation room, addressing migrant work and Apartheid spatial planning. Because for Toeba, it’s clear that artists shape the world with as much authority as structures of power. Especially in Africa, they say, claiming the narrative is urgent: “We have to take over the narrative materially, because the narrative is still very much contested.’ Artists have a primary role in shaping how the world sees itself. Unlike the technical language of law or politics, “the language of art is consciousness,” Toeba adds.