You lean forward and smell hundreds or thousands of tea bags. Inside, a mixture of different dried leaves, dried herbs. It is art, because it moves you, physically, to smell, to think, to experience life differently.

Art moves us.

I recently visited the Zeitz Mocaa (Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa) with my girlfriend, @urban.scout, and we anew experienced the magical capabilities of art. I want to share with you, in this virtual journey, the journey we took through the building, which is itself also an art piece. I really hope you enjoy this virtual journey with me!

The Building Itself

From the Outside

The building itself is impressive, just from the outside. The top floors are reserved for office use but also for hotel rooms. But staying there is a bit out of my price range. Cape Town is usually reserved for the rich and powerful! Jokes aside, this is really a beautiful building from the outside

From the Inside

From the inside, you are greeted with stunning architectural brilliance. It looks like massive grain silos that they merely cut from.

Walking underneath the first floor, you can also see all of the stonework from a bit more up close:

From the Top

The sixth floor is the highest you can go to regarding the art museum. But here you will find more art, or rather the scary art. You will look down and see where you started, six floors down. I did not dare walk over the glass tiles. It is way too scary.

From here you can see the hotel rooms and office buildings.

You can also see Cape Town!

Sixth Floor Ice Cream

On the sixth floor, you can drink some drinks and eat some fancy ice cream.

Maybe it would have been even better and more philosophical if we had wine beforehand. We went into the art way too sober, but we at least had some black ice cream whilst looking over Cape Town.

The Art Journey

You enter the building and a massive art piece greets you. It is a bunch of black plastic bags, but it is immensely beautiful.

The sheer size contributes to the awesomeness. Here is a small video to showcase it from a different floor.

In any case, you walk in and scan your tickets:

There are six floors you can explore. Some of them are working studios. It is interesting to walk through an artist's working studio.

I obviously do not own the artworks, nor did I make them, nor am I making money from posting them here. I am merely sharing with you what I took. Photographs are permitted inside of the gallery, however, you cannot use the photographs of these artworks to make money. Again, I am not sharing them here to make money from them, rather, I am sharing them with you because of their inherent beauty.

I hope you enjoy the photographs of artworks that I found to be stunning:

Then there was the one that stood out. Its name is:

Installation art uses the whole space to create art. Betwixt empty space, you are greeted with the amazing pieces of wood sculptures. You stand next to silent poets.

It speaks for itself. It is something to behold. It is really striking.

And then the one I opened this post with. Hundreds if not thousands of tea bags pinned to the wall.

There is an amazing smell. It lures you in to smell it. Every tea bag is filled with different leaves and herbs. It is at once overwhelming, and also not. It is strange but in a good way. It has a nostalgic ring to it.

Postscriptum, or Art for Art's Sake, Man

Art is funny. It is at once so subjective, but also so universal. We look to be looked at, the paintings stare back. Not because of some horror image in which someone is looking back at me, but because of the way it inspires me to ask questions, and by asking me to look at myself. All art is actually biographical.

I hope you enjoyed this virtual tour of the Zeitz Mocaa in Cape Town! I hope you will be able to visit it yourself. It continually changes its art, so you might not find these ones there. But nonetheless, you will find breathtaking work!

As mentioned, I do not own any of the work, nor do I claim to have made them. I am also not making any money from posting them here, or more specifically, I am not making money from the art itself. I am merely writing about them! They were taken with my iPhone of Nikon D300 camera. The musings are also my own.

Happy travels, stay well!