What happens when femininity is allowed to be playful, excessive, tender, stylish, emotional and joyful — without apology?
That question sits at the heart of Pretty Serious, the latest Women’s Month group exhibition presented by ORMS School of Photography in collaboration with Art School Africa.
Following the success of the inaugural Many Selves exhibition in August 2025, Pretty Serious marks the second annual Women’s Month collaboration between the two organisations.
The exhibition opened on 6 August 2026 and runs until 29 August 2026, bringing together Cape Town-based artists whose work explores femininity through painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, collage and fibre art.
But this is not an exhibition interested in presenting femininity as one fixed idea.
Instead, it embraces its contradictions.
When being “just a girl” becomes an act of resistance
At the centre of Pretty Serious is a deceptively simple idea: there can be power in allowing femininity to be joyful.
The exhibition explores the playful, performative, excessive, tender, ridiculous, stylish and emotional dimensions of the feminine experience.
Its unapologetic reclamation of being “just a girl” becomes a form of resistance.
Rather than approaching womanhood only through the weight of social expectations and historical conversations, Pretty Serious creates room for beauty, pleasure and play.
It asks audiences to consider what happens when those things are taken seriously.
The result is an exhibition that treats femininity as a space for imagination, contradiction and experimentation.
Beauty, softness and joy as powerful statements
For generations, women have often been expected to navigate complicated expectations around appearance, behaviour and identity.
Pretty Serious approaches those ideas from another direction.
Here, softness does not have to mean weakness.
Beauty does not have to be superficial.
Excess can become expression.
Romanticising the everyday can become meaningful.
And play can become a way of reclaiming parts of the self that social expectations may have taught women to suppress.
The exhibition describes beauty, joy and playfulness as a salve for indoctrinated feminine shame.
That perspective gives the exhibition its distinctive character.
Rather than asking women to justify every aspect of femininity, Pretty Serious creates space to simply experience it.
Twenty artists. Many interpretations of femininity.
Curated and produced by Buchanan & Co., the exhibition brings together an expansive group of Cape Town-based creative practices.
The participating artists are:
Alexia Smit, Alka Jiven, Celeste Jacobs, Edinah Chagwedera, Inge Prins, Kauthar Kamish, Khanyisa Buthelezi, Kristen McClarty, Zarah Cassim, Nina Turok Shapiro, Lauren Hendricks, Martha Kubule, Myra Brown, Sanell Aggenbach, Antonia Steyn, Reem Aljeally, Sera Holland, Sharday Swanepoel, Sundus Saad and Zimkhitha Mabonga.
Their collective work explores femininity through different materials, approaches and perspectives.
Photography sits alongside painting.
Sculpture meets fibre art.
Printmaking intersects with collage.
The variety reflects the central idea behind the exhibition: femininity cannot be reduced to one experience, one aesthetic or one definition.
A second chapter for Women’s Month
Pretty Serious follows Many Selves, which launched the ORMS School of Photography and Art School Africa Women’s Month exhibition collaboration in August 2025.
The second edition builds on that foundation while taking a more playful approach to the subject.
It invites audiences to consider the everyday moments that can make femininity feel joyful, absurd, beautiful, complicated or empowering.
Most importantly, it creates space for those experiences to coexist.
Because femininity can be many things at once.
It can be serious.
It can be silly.
It can be extravagant.
It can be soft.
It can be loud.
And sometimes, it can simply be fun.
Meet the artists
The exhibition’s opening programme began with a Collectors’ Preview from 5:00pm to 6:00pm on Wednesday, 6 August, giving collectors an opportunity to meet the participating artists and hear more about their practices.
The public opening followed from 6:00pm to 8:00pm.
With the exhibition running until 29 August 2026, Pretty Serious offers Cape Town audiences an opportunity to step into a world where femininity is not something that needs to be explained away or diminished.
Instead, it is something to explore.
Something to celebrate.
Something to play with.
And, perhaps most importantly, something that can be pretty serious indeed.
