ORMS School of Photography,my, in collaboration with Art School Africa, presents Pretty Serious, a group exhibition for Women’s Month, on view from 6–29 August 2026.

Pretty Serious is the second iteration of the annual Women’s Month exhibition, following Many Selves in August 2025.

The exhibition explores the playful, performative, excessive, tender, ridiculous, stylish, emotional and joyful dimensions of femininity. The reclamation of being “just a girl” is framed as its own form of resistance — a lighter touch applied to the broader discourse on womanhood.

The exhibition offers beauty, joy and playfulness as a counter to feminine shame, and treats tenderness and play as serious subjects in their own right.

The invited artists engage with femininity as a space of imagination, contradiction, experimentation and fun — addressing what it means to take beauty seriously, to find power in softness, to romanticise the everyday, embrace excess, or perform femininity on one’s own terms.

Curated and produced by Buchanan & Co., the exhibition brings together Cape Town-based practices spanning painting, photography, sculpture, printmaking, collage and fibre art. Participating artists include 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 and Antonia Steyn, Reem Aljeally, Sera Holland, Sharday Swanepoel, Sundus Saad, and Zimkhitha Mabonga.

Opening event

The exhibition opens on Wednesday, 6 August, with a Collectors’ Preview from 5:00–6:00 pm, offering an opportunity to meet the artists and hear about their practices ahead of the public opening. The exhibition then opens to the public from 6:00–8:00 pm.