Born in Atteridgeville, Pretoria in 1964, Titus Matiyane is a self-taught South African artist whose large-scale panoramic drawings and paintings examine how cities expand, connect and assert power. Working since the 1980s, he has developed a distinctive aerial perspective that merges observation, memory, research and imagination.

Matiyane’s works read as sweeping urban portraits. Roads, railways, power lines, housing and commercial zones are layered into dense, immersive compositions that bring the hidden structures of the city into view. These are not technical maps, but lived terrains shaped by movement, labour and ambition.

With a sustained interest in nationhood, infrastructure and political networks, Matiyane flattens the city into a continuous visual field. His panoramas invite slow looking, drawing the viewer across vast stretches of space and encouraging an active, searching engagement with the work.

Matiyane has exhibited widely in South Africa and abroad, including at the Pretoria Art Museum, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Goodman Gallery, Stevenson Gallery and MuseumAfrica, as well as in the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy. His work is held in major public and private collections, among them Iziko South African National Gallery, the University of Cape Town, Wits University and Spier Wine Estate.

The panoramic map presented here traces the urban continuum of Gauteng, from Waterfall to Soweto. Seen from Rosebank, the work invites viewers to situate themselves within a broader, interconnected cityscape and to consider their place within its unfolding geography.

Image Credits

Titus Matiyane (1964– )
Panorama of Gauteng, 2014
Mixed media on Fabriano paper
35 m × 120 cm