Senior visual arts lecturer Dr Nicola Grobler of the University of Pretoria (UP) has been appointed as artist-in-residence at Future Africa, the institution’s transdisciplinary research hub. This is the first residency between the School of the Arts and Future Africa at UP, and highlights the hub’s focus on partnering for research transformation.

Future Africa’s interim director, Professor Wanda Markotter, refers to its focus as “a space where the boundaries between disciplines dissolve”. So it is perhaps not surprising that Dr Grobler’s work for the residency is about bats. Yes, those creepy creatures of the night, which sleep upside down and are thought to feast on blood (in reality, only three of 1 400-plus species worldwide do). 

“Her work not only brings the humanities into the conversation about science but also challenges us to think differently about how we engage with knowledge and communicate research,” Prof Markotter says. 

The truth is Dr Grobler is fascinated with bats. She would qualify as a bat ambassador, one who campaigns for these misunderstood creatures that can eat up to 1 200 mosquitoes an hour and play a vital role in pest control, pollinating plants and dispersing seeds. She is not the only bat-lover. There is even an International Bat Appreciation Day on 17 April to celebrate bats and what they do for the world’s ecosystems.

“Bats are amazing in that they're strange animals,” Dr Grobler says. “Like us, they are mammals. They care for their young. We've categorised them in a certain way, going all the way to vampires and, in a cultural sense, sometimes fearing them because of them being nocturnal.”

Part of their mystery is we don’t really get to see them up close. 

“They don't sit still for us,” she says. “It's difficult to see how they look; we just see them flitting around.”

A powerful image that illustrates Dr Grobler’s fascination with bats shows her hanging upside down on a wooden structure, trying to experience what being a bat must feel like. It could be seen at the Javett Art Centre at UP (Javett-UP) from November 2024 to mid-February this year as part of Plurality, an exhibition by the staff of UP’s Department of Visual Arts.

“I had to practise, because I'm not that strong, to hang upside down like a bat,” Dr Grobler says. “The video was shot over a certain period of time while I trained to become more bat-like on a jungle gym in our back garden.”

The artwork, bat behaviour (2024), is a physical manifestation of her putting into practice the ideas of American philosopher and emeritus professor at New York University Thomas Nagel. He argues in his paper ‘What is It Like to Be a Bat?’ that while a human might be able to imagine what it is like to be a bat by taking “the bat's point of view”, it would still be impossible “to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat”. Dr Grobler first read it as part of her PhD in Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, and now her fourth-year students at UP engage with it in her lectures. She refers to Nagel’s paper as a “seminal source of animal phenomenology”, which refers to the research approach of describing a phenomenon by exploring it from the perspective of those who have experienced it. 

Dr Grobler is now on a year’s sabbatical. Her residency is being paid for through a grant from the Department of Higher Education and Training’s University Capacity Development Programme. Part of the grant is for someone to cover for her lectures and other responsibilities in the department, and part is to create art and launch a pilot of the project known as the Co-MammalHub.

In true Dr Grobler-style, these creative outputs involve lots of playing around or what she calls “wide-scope exploration”. She is exploring “bat-likeness” as it relates to Nagel’s idea of the body as both a limitation and an access point to understand what other species are about. Her particular access point, she says, is a series of sketches she is making of bats found in Pretoria. 

“And working through my observational drawings and seeing what that brings to me in terms of understanding,” she adds. “I am trying out different things: these works on paper, sculptural works, some wood carving, and I am planning to do some collages as well.”

Also in true Dr Grobler style, her exploration is directed. Although the residency was finalised only at the end of April, she is already confirmed for an exhibition at its halfway mark. Her 2025 iteration of bat behaviour is being presented at the Free State Arts Festival in Bloemfontein in July. It is curated by MC Roodt, Strategic Relationship Facilitator at Javett-UP.

There is a second part to her creative outputs for the residency – a collaborative project at the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in Pretoria’s CBD, formerly the Transvaal Museum established in 1895. Dr Grobler’s role is one of reinvigorating the museum to become “a space for discussion and exchange, to become a hub, a place where critical issues can be debated; and to move away from the idea that an exhibition will be top down, and throw facts at you”. 

She is working with Ditsong’s curator for archaeozoology and its large mammal collection, Dr Annie Antonites, its Public Programmes team, Bongi Legwase and Tebogo Pitso, as well as Prof Mia Abrie of UP’s Faculty of Education, to create targeted interventions in the mammals hall. They are focusing on three species of different sizes: rhinos, pangolins and bats, starting with bats as the pilot project. Co-MammalHub aims to revitalise the museum with an artistic strategy that will allow experts and the public to come together and chat, followed by sessions of co-creating the exhibitions, which will then be installed.

This is a familiar process to Dr Grobler. It is inspired by her PhD thesis, ‘The Visitor Centre’, a seven-year exploration through videos, sculpture and public participation of ways to reinvent the concept of visitor engagement at a natural history museum. One of her PhD videos shows a backpack she unfolds to reveal beautifully crafted items, such as a piece of her hair encased in a glass mould. Visitors touch and ponder this and other artefacts she shares, and create their own meaning. She says one possible outcome of her residency at Future Africa is to create a visitor centre for bats. 

This is not Dr Grobler’s first residency. It is just closer to home. Her first was in 2006 in Basel, Switzerland, after she’d graduated cum laude with a master’s degree from UCT – the Christoph Merian Foundation’s IAAB residency, partnered by the Swiss public arts foundation, Pro Helvetia. It became three months of creativity, travel and playfulness, culminating in her artistic contribution, Ich komme nicht von hier, a public installation on the river Rhine during Art Basel 37.

UP’s School of the Arts is championing Dr Grobler’s residency. Dr Hester du Plessis, an associate researcher at the school and a senior faculty Fellow at Future Africa, saw an opportunity after a chance conversation with Dr Grobler at Javett-UP uncovered their mutual interest in bats. Ultimately, it led to the creation of this artistic environmental residency.

Prof Rory du Plessis, Acting Head of Visual Arts, said the School of the Arts is proud of Dr Grobler’s achievement. 

“[Her output], in particular her work on human-non-human species relationships and urban ecology, will promote and stimulate dialogue at Future Africa on the way humans can become ambassadors for non-human species.” 

“Dr Grobler’s focus on bats links directly to the programme of work led by our Future Africa Research Chair on People, Health and Places, which adopts a One Health lens,” Prof Markotter says. “This thematic alignment reinforces the relevance of creative practice in addressing health and environmental challenges in integrated ways. Through this collaboration, we hope to unlock possibilities for creative engagement with some of Africa’s most urgent contemporary challenges.”