‘Burning’ is a collaborative installation that explores how conflict is experienced in the digital age. At its centre, a car burns – an image of destruction that is simultaneously real and symbolic – echoing the now-familiar spectacle of violence. Surrounding it are multiple viewing points designed as social media frames.

For many, violence exists not as sirens or rubble, but as curated images and distant headlines, flickering pixels in an endless scroll. What is visceral for some is virtual for others.

This work interrogates the disparity between those who live within the spectacle of violence and those who spectate from afar. How does turmoil resonate at an individual level when experienced virtually? By framing the viewer’s gaze, the artists question how empathy, awareness, and detachment are shaped by digital platforms.

Ronald Abdou Ngum is a Cameroonian-born multimedia artist with a BAFA from the University of Cape Town. He explores intersections of history, culture, and identity. Embracing multiplicity, Abdou draws on personal experience to examine how systems of knowledge, power and perception influence human interaction. Through interactive, hybrid forms, he affirms the possibility of being many things at once.

Zach Stewart is a multimedia artist with a BAFA from the University of Cape Town. His work spans sculpture, animation, and installation and, most recently, he has had a love for making small objects and curios. Stewart’s current works have focused on whiteness and queerness within the racial and religious context of South Africa.

Ronald and Zach have collaborated on multiple projects together, including the Japanese Garden Art for Peace Commission (2022).