Garth Erasmus is a visual artist and musician whose work focuses on SA`s First Nation people, the KhoiSan, which is his heritage. Originally from the Eastern Cape he now lives and works in Kraaifontein (outside Cape Town). 

He is a former teacher at the Zonnebloem Children`s Art Centre, District Six in Cape Town.He is a former chairperson of Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI) and during the 80`s and 90`s was an active member of the art projects Vakalisa and Community Reflections. He is one of the founding artists of Greatmore Street Artists Studio, and the Thupelo Artists Workshop (Cape Town). One of his large-scale mural artworks is included in an installation depicting first peoples at Artscape Theatre, Cape Town. His audio installation, Autshomato, is at the Robben Island Museum (Nelson Mandela Gateway, Cape Town).  

Garth is part of the activist music and poetry group, Khoi Khonnexion, who toured European music theatre festivals in 2018-19 with the production House of Falling Bones which is based on the genocide of the Nama and Herero people by the German colonialists in South West Africa (now Namibia). This project was completed in 2022 with an exhibition installation titled SAND !HU SAND at the Kunsthaus Hamburg.  

Garth’s sonic collaboration with flutist Esther Marié Pauw enacts forms of decolonial aesthesis, and interventionist curating amidst publics, institutions, art, and music-making. They have presented sound events on Roesdorp forced-removals (2015), on Dutch-Khoi colonial encounters (Khoi’npsalms, 2018, with organist Francois Blom), on the first owners’ ghosts at 7 Joubert Street (Suiwer in Blauw, 2018), Garden Music (Johnman Centre in 2019, 2020) and Something in Return (on DARK DARK GALLERY by Greg de Cuir Jr., 2020). In 2020 Garth initiated the Africa Open Improvisation Collective at Stellenbosch University`s Africa Open Institute (AOI) and, during the Covid-19 lockdown, this collective maintained monthly Zoom music-making sessions. The idea behind this decolonial exercise is to create a nexus between Western Classical and African musics and break down heirarchical structures and attitudes. The collective`s free improvisations can be heard on: https://soundcloud.com/user-610733588.   

Garth’s visual art is represented by Koena Art Institute. 

Garth is also a member of the Khoisan Gypsy Band whose theatre production Die Poet Wie`s Hy? on the work of Adam Small won Best Production at the STELLENBOSCH WOORDFEES 2020. His visual art has been extensively collected by the Smithsonian Institute of African Art in Washington, USA.,  

https://asai.co.za/artist/garth-erasmus/  

In 2024 a selection of Garth’s recorded music was published by the German company Tal Records as a vinyl LP titled: THRENODY FOR THE KHOISAN. This was followed by a 6-city concert tour of Germany to promote the release.  

Garth was hosted by Zuid Afrika Huis in Amsterdam in 2024 to present a concert and a talk about his visual art and music. His visual art was also the subject of an 2024 exhibition by the Marxist magazine jungeWELT at Maigalerie in Berlin.  

Garth was one of the artists included in the German-South Africa group exhibition OSCILLATIONS at Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 2024.