Street smart: The Living Artists Emporium, which forms part of the Contra.Joburg festival on at the end of the month. Pictures: Supplied
Johannesburg is a city in tension. It’s a city where bricks fall and buildings rise at the same time.
Where potholes open underfoot — but murals bloom on the walls. Where people say, “This city is falling apart,” yet artists continue to create, in spite of it all.
And, in the heart of that contradiction, lives Contra.Joburg, the city’s most radical visual arts festival. Set to return on 30 and 31 August, this is not your average gallery crawl. It’s something raw. Alive. Urgent.
It’s a festival that dares to ask: “What if art interrupts you?”
“There’s this perception that the city is dangerous; that you don’t want to come here,” says Sara Hallatt, founder of Contra.Joburg. “But then you walk into these studios and people are shocked. They go, ‘God, it’s so amazing. It’s so inspiring.’”
For Hallatt, who has been working in Johannesburg’s inner city for many years, first with Bag Factory, now with The Art House, that tension is both exhausting and electric. She’s seen the city at its worst but also witnessed beauty in places most would overlook.
“We don’t want to lie about where we are or what it’s like,” she tells me. “This is our home. This is where our friends are.
“It might be chaotic outside, but inside? It’s clean, safe and beautiful.”
While many cultural events rely on corporate polish and gallery grandeur, Contra flips that model. Instead of asking artists to bring their work to the people, it brings the people to the artists.
Living art: Artist Bev Bukow demonstrates interactive body weaving.
This year, over 170 artists, designers and makers will activate studios and galleries spaces across the inner city, places where work is made, not just shown.
“We’ve always been located in the city,” Hallatt explains. “And it’s never been spectacular in the traditional sense — not for decades.
“But within a 7km radius, we’ve got an array of artists doing incredibly interesting things.” She pauses, then adds with a smile: “You’ve just got to know where to look.”
Contra is deliberately hard to define. It’s part art fair, part open studio, part social experiment. And that’s exactly the point.
“It’s more interesting than going to a convention centre,” Hallatt
says plainly.
“That’s not real. If you want to know what’s happening in real South Africa, come see what people are doing with their hands. Ask them. They’re just trying to be Africans and do their thing.”
So, the festival opens up spaces usually closed to the public: working studios, rooftops, courtyards.
It offers intimate access to artists at every level of their careers, from established painters to shoemakers, muralists and designers.
“Very few cities in the world have what we have,” Hallatt says. “Most places are pushing creatives out of the city because it’s too expensive. But here, we’ve still got this huge concentration of creative energy, in one place.”
Contra is also deeply practical. For many artists in the city, accessing formal gallery spaces is difficult. Contra fills that gap by creating both visibility and opportunity.
“We’ve been excluded from the market,” Hallatt says. “We’re not getting invited into spaces anymore. So, we thought let’s just use what we’ve got. Use the studios. Use our databases. Use our community.”
The result? Nearly R3 million in direct art sales since the festival began in 2022 — money that goes straight into artists’ pockets. Not gallery commissions. Not red tape. Just real support.
And it’s not just for established collectors: “Some people come with beer money, some with bubbly money,” Hallatt jokes.
“We try to make the work accessible. We’ve even got a shuttle service — all designed to remove barriers.
For many Joburgers, the inner city still feels off-limits. Some haven’t set foot downtown in 10, even 20, years. But Contra is changing that, one bus ride at a time.
“One woman told me she hadn’t been to the city in 25 years,” Hallatt recalls. “She was horrified but she loved it. She came back the next year.”
That kind of return, literal and symbolic, is part of the festival’s purpose.
“We’re building pathways,” she says. “Not just for people to see art, but for people to see the city again. To see that it’s still alive. Still worth investing in.”
Child’s pay: Kids get a chance to be creative at Contra.Joburg.
Contra is run by a tiny team: Hallatt and two interns. There’s no major funding body. No municipal support — yet. But there is vision. There is grit.
“We’ve had no help from the city,” she says. “But we know what this could be. You bring 10 000 people into the inner city for an event like this and that’s tourism, that’s the economy, that’s urban regeneration.”
She believes this festival, and others like it, could be a blueprint for how culture can rebuild cities from the inside out.
“This isn’t just about art,” she says. “It’s about economic stability. It’s about giving people reasons to come back to the city. Who knows what that sparks down the line?”
The festival measures success in many ways: social media buzz, ticket sales, artist commissions and studio visits. But, for Sara, one metric matters most.
“We ask people: ‘Are you an art buyer? Or are you just art-curious?’” she says. “Because, if we can convert the curious, then we’re doing something right.”
It’s working. Some visitors become repeat buyers. Some start supporting artists directly. Some keep coming back, drawn by the energy, the surprise, the possibility of being moved.
Joburg isn’t an easy city. Hallatt knows that. “There are definitely days where I’m like, ‘What is this madness?’” she admits.
“But there’s something so real here. You see both ruin and rebirth. You see people trying, really trying, to make something meaningful.”
She reflects on the diversity of the Contra crowd: “You’ve got people in their 50s and 60s, you’ve got 18-year-olds. You’ve got the queer community, the creatives, the art lovers, the curious. They come together in this very Joburg way and a little wild, a little messy, but full of heart.”
And at the centre of it all? A community. A network of artists supporting one another, not for fame or fortune, but for the love of the game.
“We’re not making big money. We don’t have huge sponsors. But we have each other,” she says. “We’re building something weird and wonderful. It’s not perfect, but it’s real.”
What if art interrupts you? What if, walking through Johannesburg’s broken streets, you stumble into a courtyard and hear music? What if you step into a sunlit studio and see something you never expected — a painting, a shoe, a sculpture — and that changes the way you see this place?
That’s Contra.Joburg. Not an exhibition, a performance, just real people doing real things.