New worlds unfolding — how Thekiso Mokhele uses AI to reshape artistic labour

Daily Maverick

7 days ago

Thekiso Mokhele has found a creative toolbox and is pioneering new territory for art-making.
As artificial intelligence (AI) technologies reshape the boundaries of art, Thekiso Mokhele's work pushes into the speculative unknown. This is one of the reasons his art was selected by the WORLDART Gallery for the HEAT Winter Arts Festival, which takes place from 6 to 16 August and is centred on the theme, 'Other Worlding'.
Blending his foundation in photography with new digital tools, Mokhele uses AI to imagine futures rooted in African narratives, memory and myth.
At a recent art fair, he presented works made with AI. His marginal position was reflected in the display as his work occupied a small corner where he and another artist had works placed.
'This is where it starts,' he said. 'In five or 10 years, I'll look back and remember the exact corner.' For Mokhele, it was not about being first, it was about standing on the edge of what art might become.
Mokhele is an artist based in Johannesburg, and his work with AI is fairly recent. He has a background in photography, and his artistic journey began long before the current wave of generative AI tools such as Midjourney or ChatGPT became part of today's creative toolbox. He was already digging through the deep web for tools he could use to help him see what didn't yet exist. He was looking for something that could not be done by a camera.
'I have always had an eye,' he says, describing the visual sensibility as nuances honed through the eye behind the camera. He began experimenting by testing how prompts could be shaped and worked, and this evolved with his curiosity.
He came to recognition for a series of AI images, titled The Rumbling. These images were created in response to the methane gas leak explosion in the Johannesburg CBD on 19 July 2023. Inspired by the chaos, Mokhele used the destructive images to start a conversation among people about the state of South Africa's infrastructure. He often returns to this idea of curiosity of play and building.
'I want to create pieces that are going to speak to people… in a way that is deeper than just normal visuals that you'd expect. I want them to tell a story.'
His workflow is complex and multilayered. Every image begins with intention, a concept, mood and composition. He constructs a vision using every tool at his disposal: photography, references, detailed prompt engineering and editing. He often uses his own photos as raw material. These are images he has shot, directed and styled, sampling and transforming them through the AI lens. Lighting, texture, framing, tone. They are intuitive but also learned.
Years of working with a camera taught him how a photo should look, where the shadows should fall, and how the human body communicates through gestures and poses. These instincts guide the way he writes prompts, refines outputs and chooses what not to use.
Because AI art is disruptive, it is controversial. It is threatening the status quo. It blurs the line between machine and maker, between invention and replication. And in doing so, it opens deep, uncomfortable questions: Who owns an image? What counts as authorship? Is creativity still creative if it is shared with a machine?
We are not speculating anymore about it. It's here. Mokhele does not claim to have all the answers. He speaks often about how images don't make themselves.
'AI itself is another dimension because it references our world but creates what it interprets as us.'
For him, AI is a tool and it is not here to erase artistic labour, but to reshape it. This has made him more aware of what he brings to the process – not less. His background in photography informs how he prompts. Every decision, every edit, every prompt is part of his intention. It is a hybrid process. One that relies on an understanding of code and colour, composition and command lines. Mokhele is still learning what the process is.
Mokhele's work fits here because it is speculative. It imagines new worlds and challenges how we define what's real. He is not claiming to lead a movement, but he is claiming his space in it. His art exists in a moment that is still unfolding.
'Futurism is a duality of what we believe we're living in now and what the future will be,' he says.
In many ways, his work is already part of an answer. He is not using AI to run away from art but to build on its existing characteristics. This fusion challenges the potential of African artistic production beyond colonial expectations and rigid traditions. To create work that lives in speculative worlds, future landscapes and imagined timelines. Work that is rooted in photography, but also in play, experimentation and risk. DM
A longer version of this article will appear in HEAT: Emerging Artists You Should Know 2025.
Mokhele is showing at WORLDART Gallery's HEAT Festival exhibition titled Technology as Palette: Imagination to Image. Meet the artist during a curator-led walkabout on 7 August at 5pm at Alliance Francaise. Visit www.heatfestival.org to book and find out more about the festival.