Without Words: Tanja Truscott’s Quiet Language of Abstraction at Sisonke Gallery

In an age of relentless commentary and visual overload, silence can feel radical. With Without Words, Cape Town–based artist Tanja Truscott offers precisely that: a space where instinct takes precedence over interpretation, and where feeling arrives before language.

Presented by House Union Block at Sisonke Gallery from 03 March to 31 May 2026, the solo exhibition gathers a series of abstract drawings on paper that resist the urgency of explanation. Instead, they ask viewers to slow down — to look carefully, sit with uncertainty, and allow emotion to surface without the mediation of words.

The exhibition follows Truscott’s participation in the Nando’s Creative Exchange in 2024, extending the momentum and support fostered through the programme. Yet Without Words feels deeply personal in its restraint. There is no insistence on narrative, no demand for decoding. The works exist as quiet encounters.

Though categorised as drawings, the pieces are created not with pencil but with oil paint applied to meticulously prepared paper. The result is a body of work in which line takes on unusual prominence — delicate, searching, and deeply intuitive. Some compositions suggest fleeting references to gardens, figures or remembered places, while others detach entirely from recognisable form. Across all of them, line becomes less about depiction and more about sensation.

For Truscott, the return to drawing marks a significant shift after years dedicated to large-scale painting. Created throughout the latter half of 2025 and early 2026, the works speak softly to one another through repeated gestures, muted tonalities and rhythmic mark-making that unfolds across the gallery space.

The process itself appears central to the exhibition’s atmosphere. Each sheet of paper is sealed to create a slick, resistant surface before the artist begins. From there, the practice becomes almost meditative: brushes selected with care, palettes deliberately restrained, compositions allowed to emerge gradually through repetition and attentiveness. Working on paper, Truscott found, offered both freedom and immediacy — a space for experimentation without spectacle.

What emerges is an exhibition that feels resolute in its gentleness. Without Words does not seek to dominate attention; it quietly holds it. In a cultural moment driven by reaction and commentary, Truscott’s work proposes another kind of engagement altogether — one shaped by stillness, intuition and the possibility that meaning does not always need to be spoken aloud.

All works in the exhibition are available for sale.