David Krut Arts is pleased to present HOPE / Against the Grammar of Violence, the first solo exhibition by Diego Masera at David Krut Arts, Johannesburg. The exhibition brings together conceptual works on paper and a video work, alongside a new series of unique works produced in collaboration with the David Krut Workshop.
Masera is a former diplomat and cultural interlocutor whose work explores international exchange, social dialogue, and contemporary cultural production. Drawing on his background in international development, environmental policy, and work with communities affected by inequality and climate crisis, Masera approaches art as a form of knowledge capable of expressing what political and institutional language often cannot.
Created at a time marked by war, displacement, political fragmentation and the erosion of meaningful international dialogue, the exhibition considers hope not as sentiment, but as an ethical necessity. Expanding these concerns into visual form, Masera collaborated with Roxy Kaczmarek at the David Krut Workshop in downtown Arts On Main, Johannesburg to produce his first experimental body of work on paper exploring peace, borders, migration and the hidden structures that sustain global conflict. Through these works as well as through video, and pieces informed by performance and statistical data, Masera reflects on the fragile and often contradictory relationship between violence and peace.
Central to the exhibition is a large-scale paperwork in which the word PEACE is formed through bullet holes. Readable only in reverse, the work suggests peace as something violently forced into visibility — seen only through evidence of destruction. Accompanied by a video documenting its making, the piece confronts the paradox of imagining peace through instruments of violence. The bullet becomes both mark and wound; the paper both target and witness.
Images of bird migration evoke disrupted movement and contested airspace during times of war, while mapped routes of migration and weapons circulation point to the wider systems shaping human displacement and instability. Together, the works reflect on rupture, vulnerability, and the possibility of repair.
Masera’s broader practice engages themes of home, exile, memory, and belonging, drawing from personal experience. These ideas expand toward peace itself as a condition for survival and belonging. Rather than offering optimism, the exhibition proposes hope as an active and necessary responsibility. In a moment of global uncertainty, Masera positions art as a space for reflection, resistance, and the possibility of imagining otherwise.
HOPE/Against the Grammar of Violence offers a timely reflection on the urgent need to reclaim the language of peace before it disappears from public imagination.