ART PROGRAMME

12 Galleries will open their Festival exhibitions. Pick up your festival map at the festival hub at Alliance Francaise, 155 Loop Street or at any of the participating galleries.

Heat Director Mary Corrigall will take visitors on a walking tour of some of the HEAT Festival exhibitions. Baloyi will introduce the theme of the festival and tease out through artworks and conversations how it relates to artworks. During this journey, you will meet artists, curators, and art dealers to discover what motivates artists and how they approach their art-making.

Afrofuturies invites us to reimagine tomorrow by excavating the silences of our past—the lost rituals, ancestral wisdoms, and untold stories that lie beyond official archives. This panel will explore how creative practitioners harness speculative frameworks to reclaim these cultural mores, weaving them into narratives that speak to our present realities and shape more resilient futures.

Artists Mongezi Ncaphayi, Mhlonishwa Zulu , and Russel Abrahams will be opening up their studio  spaces to allow audiences to access the entire process of how they move from ideation and conception to eventual production and exhibition. Curator Voni Baloyi will also introduce her exhibition, At Their Feet.

This will be an unforgettable meeting between the evocative art of Lucas Sithole and Cyprian Shilakoe and the versatile musician Sky Dladla who is renowned for her expertise in African instruments and indigenous music. 

This incredible event is set at the Norval Foundation, in the upstairs gallery where the exhibition titled They Came & Left Footprints, curated by Karel Nel and Carmen Joubert, is being staged.  Drawing from the Homestead and Bruce Campbell Smith Revisions Collections, the exhibition reflects on memory, ancestry, and the legacy of artists whose work remains powerfully relevant. Sithole and Shilakoe’s sculptures and prints speak to themes of loss, resilience, and spiritual connection during the Apartheid era—presented together in this curatorial pairing for the first time. 

Joubert will introduce the exhibition before Dladla begins her performance. This is not a seated event, after receiving a glass of wine, the audience is encouraged to roam the exhibition while appreciating the art and music.

Heat Curator Nkgopoleng Moloi will take visitors on a walking tour of some of the HEAT Festival exhibitions. Baloyi will introduce the theme of the festival and tease out through artworks and conversations how it relates to artworks. During this journey, you will meet artists, curators, and art dealers to discover what motivates artists and how they approach their art-making.

Beyond Tourism – Cultural Production, Urban Narratives, and the City as Site

This talk examines Cape Town's cultural identity: how has the city’s image been shaped as a destination rather than a place of deep creative production? What are the structural and historic forces at play, and how can artists, cultural organisations, and the public push for a richer, more inclusive cultural economy?

There are over 13 exhibitions to see during the festival. They have all been especially curated to tie in with the Other Worlding festival theme. 

Heat Curator Nkgopoleng Moloi will take visitors on a walking tour of some of the HEAT Festival exhibitions. Baloyi will introduce the theme of the festival and tease out through artworks and conversations how it relates to artworks. During this journey, you will meet artists, curators, and art dealers to discover what motivates artists and how they approach their art-making.

Sponsored by the Mission for Inner City. This is a walking tour of a selection of outdoor public artworks in the city centre. It is led by Richard Kilpert of Art Route and promises to be a lively and engaging experience.  Expect to see artworks by leading South African artists that include Brett Murray. 

This is an art and music pairing that will heighten appreciation of the artworks in the Motherhood: Paradox and Duality exhibition, curated by Andrea Lewis. Lewis will be in conversation with some of the artists whose works are featured. This will be followed by the choral group Amici de Lumine. 

In an era of political instability, economic hardship, and global crises, the act of mothering -whether biological, chosen, or communal – has never been more critical or radical. This exhibition invites audiences to see caregiving as an act of resilience, love as a form of labour, and mothering as a political force that shapes and sustains societies. 

This will be an unforgettable meeting between the evocative art of Lucas Sithole and Cyprian Shilakoe and the versatile musician Sky Dladla who is renowned for her expertise in African instruments and indigenous music. 

This incredible event is set at the Norval Foundation, in the upstairs gallery where the exhibition titled They Came & Left Footprints, curated by Karel Nel and Carmen Joubert, is being staged.  Drawing from the Homestead and Bruce Campbell Smith Revisions Collections, the exhibition reflects on memory, ancestry, and the legacy of artists whose work remains powerfully relevant. Sithole and Shilakoe’s sculptures and prints speak to themes of loss, resilience, and spiritual connection during the Apartheid era—presented together in this curatorial pairing for the first time. 

Joubert will introduce the exhibition before Dladla begins her performance. This is not a seated event, after receiving a glass of wine, the audience is encouraged to roam the exhibition while appreciating the art and music.

Heat Curator Voni Baloyi will take visitors on a walking tour of some of the HEAT Festival exhibitions. Baloyi will introduce the theme of the festival and tease out through artworks and conversations how it relates to artworks. During this journey, you will meet artists, curators, and art dealers to discover what motivates artists and how they approach their art-making.

Heat Curator Voni Baloyi will take visitors on a walking tour of some of the HEAT Festival exhibitions. Baloyi will introduce the theme of the festival and tease out through artworks and conversations how it relates to artworks. During this journey, you will meet artists, curators, and art dealers to discover what motivates artists and how they approach their art-making.

Generations of women artists have been overlooked and sidelined despite their profound creative contributions. Many entered an art world that was underdeveloped and closed to women. In recent years, solo retrospectives for trailblazers like Sue Williamson and Esther Mhlangu have sparked overdue recognition, and auction records for Marlene Dumas have prompted institutions and collectors to reconsider older female artists' practices, yet countless other female artists continue to work in the margins—unseen.

Artists Mongezi Ncaphayi, Mhlonishwa Zulu , and Russel Abrahams will be opening up their studio  spaces to allow audiences to access the entire process of how they move from ideation and conception to eventual production and exhibition. Curator Voni Baloyi will also introduce her exhibition, At Their Feet.

Sponsored by the Mission for Inner City. This is a walking tour of a selection of outdoor public artworks in the city centre. It is led by Richard Kilpert of Art Route and promises to be a lively and engaging experience.  Expect to see artworks by leading South African artists that include Brett Murray. 

This survey show of Johann Louw’s work at the gallery will guide a conversation between this renowned artist and art dealer Baylon Sandri, who has been working with the artist for an extensive period. It is expected to be a lively and informative experience. 

Louw's extensive body of work, rooted in an evocative engagement with the human condition, aligns seamlessly with the speculative themes of Other Worlding. His paintings and drawings, often oscillating between figuration and abstraction, explore psychological and existential narratives that blur the boundaries between past and present, memory and reality. 

Meet the six artists participating in the Cubicle series, an ongoing platform at CIRCA Cape Town giving artists scope to exhibit smaller bodies of artworks and site-specific installations for two weeks. Participating artists for the Cubicle Series are;  Mikky George, Samukelisiwe Majola, Rebaone Finger, Hannah Macfarlane, Kea Seema and Gwen Van Embden.

They will each be present at this event and introduce their work and discuss it with visitors.  This is going to be a stimulating and inspiring morning, getting to know these rising artists on the Cape Town art scene.