This September, as part of the Cape Town Photography Festival, Artvark Gallery hosts award-winning South African photographer Marguerite Oelofse for her deeply compelling solo exhibition, Our Heart.

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Marguerite Oelofse is an award-winning South African photographer known for her painterly approach to visual storytelling. Her work blends art and narrative to create images rich in texture, emotion and atmosphere, drawing inspiration from classical painting and natural light.

 

In 2022, she received two prestigious honours at the World Food Photography Awards: the Claire Aho Award for Women Photographers and Food Photographer of the Year (African Territory). Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Royal Photographic Society in Bristol, Mall Galleries in London, and Fortnum & Mason. She has also taken part in the Laatikkomo exhibition in Jyväskylä, Finland—an outdoor gallery presenting photography in illuminated light-boxes.

 

On 26 February 2026, one of her images was exhibited at the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography as part of Fashion_The Image, dedicated to African fashion. Alongside her commercial practice, she has lectured in photography, contributes to Jan the Journal, and was named one of South Africa’s photographic greats by The Sunday Times.

 

OUR HEART

3 - 27 September

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My name is Marguerite, and more than 25 years ago I received a heart transplant in Cape Town. On 16 July 2000, at just 17 years old, I was given a second life under the care of Dr Susan Vosloo, Africa’s first female heart surgeon. This body of work is expressed through both portraiture and still life, and is a meditation on survival, gratitude, and becoming – told through my lens as both photographer and subject.

Truth, for me, is not abstract. It is something I carry within my body. To live with another woman’s heart is both a medical reality and something that feels, even now, beyond logic – an inexplicable intervention. This is my truth: not something I can escape, only something I can learn to honour.

This series reflects what it means to live after being given life. It speaks to the fragile threshold between loss and continuation, and to the unseen bond between two women who never met, yet share one beating heart.

Our Heart was photographed at the site of the accident where my donor lost her life. An ostrich collided with the vehicle, and the injuries she sustained were fatal days later. From that moment of tragedy, life was transferred – hers becoming mine.

In these portraits, I embody Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, holding an ostrich egg as a symbol of the Cosmic Egg. In myth, the Cosmic Egg represents creation itself – the origin of the universe, the beginning of time, spirit, and form. It speaks to rebirth not as illusion, but as transformation. Marguerite-Marie Alacoque, a French Visitation nun, received visions of Christ in which His Sacred Heart was revealed as a symbol of divine love and mercy. Through her, devotion to the Sacred Heart took form – a theology rooted in the heart as both vessel and offering.

Within this expanded series, works titled Sacrifice and Weighing Souls deepen this inquiry. Sacrifice reflects the silent exchange that made my life possible – the unchosen offering where one life yields to another. Weighing Souls draws from ancient Egyptian belief, where the heart was weighed against a feather to determine the soul’s passage into the afterlife. Here, the heart is no longer symbolic – it is real, carried, and questioned. What is the weight of a life lived with another’s heart? What does truth ask of us in return?

This series is both elegy and offering. It honours the woman whose heart lives within me, the surgeon whose hands placed it there, and the mystery that binds death and life together. It is my quiet thank-you, and my Sacred Heart.

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Activations:

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Thursday 3 September at 18:00 - Opening Night 18:00

Free entry and enjoy a glass of complimentary wine 

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Sunday 13 September at 12:00 - Walkabout & Live Jazz.

Featuring an artist walkabout followed by a live performance by an all-female jazz trio: Kirsten Skippers on piano, Janine October on drums, and Danél Murcott on flute/saxophone.  

Tickets available from Quicket: R250 (includes a meal and a glass of wine at Kalk Bay Courtyard). 

https://www.quicket.co.za/events/392966-marguerite-oelofse-our-heart-walkabout-talk-and-live-jazz-trio/#/