| What: Vulvasphere – Woman Beyond the Surface – a Multi-Sensory Exhibition When: June 5-15, 2025 Where: Lumi, Shop 2, The Village Gate, 19 Main Road, Hout Bay (opposite Dario’s Café, next to Ali’s Barber) Opening times: Tuesdays to Sundays, 10am – 5pm Entrance: Free entrance to exhibition. Fee applies for workshops Featured artists: Include Jessica Adams, Yvette Hess, Amy Keevy, Carla Classen, Nicole Biondi, Sophie Smith, CJordan and Marie Kenny and musician Brendan Adams Workshop booking link: https://www.iscarosa.com/see/vulvasphere-an-exhibition |
“This is more than an exhibition. It’s a call to come home to our bodies, our stories, and each other,” says curator Jessica Adams about Vulvasphere, a multi-sensory exhibition opening in Cape Town on June 5. There is no charge to attend the exhibition which is on until June 15, 2025 but a fee applies for the workshops which are running in tandem with the exhibition. Read on for more. Info as supplied:
Vulvasphere – Woman Beyond the Surface: A Bold, Multi-Sensory Exhibition Opens June 5, 2025 at Lumi in Hout Bay
Cape Town, South Africa — A powerful new exhibition, Vulvasphere – Woman Beyond the Surface, opens on June 5 and runs until June 15, 2025 at Lumi, a women-led co-working space and art gallery in Hout Bay. This immersive exhibition invites the public into a rich, intimate space of art, storytelling, and sensory experience – challenging silence, shame, and invisibility surrounding the female body by celebrating it in all its complexity, diversity, and beauty.
Curated by sex educator and intimacy coach Jessica Adams, Vulvasphere blends sculpture, photography, painting, sound, and word art, into a layered exploration of vulva-bodied existence. From vulva casts, lens-based artistry and introspective portraits to poetry, music, and personal narratives of pleasure, the exhibition reclaims and reimagines what has long been hidden or dismissed.
Featured artists include Jessica Adams, Yvette Hess, Amy Keevy, Carla Classen, Nicole Biondi, Sophie Smith, CJordan and Marie Kenny, alongside musician Brendan Adams, who composed a sound piece incorporating authentic audio expressions of pleasure.
With its interdisciplinary approach and inclusive programming – including artist talks and workshops – Vulvasphere promises to foster open, thoughtful dialogue across genders and generations on themes of embodiment, pleasure, and radical self-acceptance.
“This is more than an exhibition,” says curator Jessica Adams. “It’s a call to come home to our bodies, our stories, and each other.”
To find out about the workshops, see: https://www.iscarosa.com/see/vulvasphere-an-exhibition
This exhibition is made possible with support from the Austrian Cultural Forum at the Austrian Embassy in Pretoria.
About the artists
Jessica Adams
Jessica Adams is a sex counsellor, intimacy coach, and educator whose work centers on embodiment, emotional wellness, and relational healing. Through individual sessions, group workshops, and public education, she helps people—especially women—reconnect with their bodies, boundaries, and desires. Her creative practice is rooted in the belief that pleasure, presence, and emotional literacy are essential tools for personal and collective transformation.
Amy Keevy
Amy Keevy is a multidisciplinary artist and photographer living on the Garden Route. Working across watercolour, ink, embroidery, and lens-based media, her art explores themes of femininity, grief, nature, and transformation. Amy’s intuitive, fluid style embraces softness and surrender, using natural materials and gentle repetition to invite reflection on what it means to feel deeply and live vulnerably. Alongside her art practice, she supports creatives through brand storytelling and visual identity work.
Yvette Hess
Yvette Hess is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and mental health advocate based in Ladismith, South Africa. Her work spans painting, drawing, sculpture, and text, and is often rooted in her lived experience of bipolar disorder, addiction, and recovery. Through her studio, Yah! Fine Art, and co-founded gallery, Lost and Found, Yvette champions underrepresented artists from the Kannaland region. Her creative expression gives voice to grief, shame, and healing—making space for difficult truths and tender reclamation.
Carla Classen
Carla Classen is a Cape Town-based artist and writer working across performance, installation, poetry, and mixed media. Her practice explores how trauma, gender, and memory are held and released within domestic spaces. By repurposing household objects, text, and ritual, she reclaims the private realm as a site of survival, resistance, and repair. Carla’s work often invites audiences into deeply personal, yet universally resonant acts of witnessing and reflection.
Chelsea Jordan Horn
Chelsea Jordan Horn is a multidisciplinary artist, entrepreneur, and activist whose work celebrates the beauty, power, and resilience of womxn of colour. Through painting, performance, and storytelling, she centers body positivity, radical self-love, and joyful resistance. Her practice is both deeply personal and unapologetically political—an invitation to reject societal norms and embrace pleasure, presence, and power. Chelsea’s vibrant energy and lived experience infuse her art with boldness, softness, and a fierce devotion to liberation.
Brendan Adams
Brendan Adams is a Cape Town-born musician and composer whose work blends soul, jazz, folk, and blues into rich, emotive soundscapes. With over 20 years of experience performing and recording both locally and abroad, he has collaborated with artists such as Hugh Masekela and Jonathan Butler. His music carries themes of longing, joy, and resilience. For this exhibition, Brendan composed a sound piece incorporating authentic audio expressions of pleasure—creating a layered sonic experience rooted in embodiment and intimacy.
Marie Kenny
Marie Kenny is a lens-based artist and creative coach from Lyon, France, now based in Cape Town. Her photographic work explores identity, neurodivergence, and radical self-acceptance, often through intimate self-portraiture and visual journaling. With a focus on cyclical healing, Marie’s art captures the body as both witness and storyteller. Beyond her personal practice, she supports artists and entrepreneurs through one-on-one coaching that cultivates self-belief and creative agency.
Nicole Biondi
Nicole Biondi is a Cape Town-based poet, performer, facilitator, and MC whose work lives at the intersection of creativity, care, and systems change. She founded the pioneering Verses Spoken Word Sessions in 2004—a monthly event that helped catalyse Cape Town’s spoken word movement—and released South Africa’s first spoken word album in 2007. Nicole has performed alongside acclaimed artists such as Neo Muyanga, Antjie Krog, and The Last Poets. Today, she brings her gift for storytelling and ‘dot-connecting’ into her consultancy, The Wayfindery, helping people and organisations navigate complexity with clarity and imagination.
Sophie Smith
Sophie Smith is a South African lens-based artist and photojournalist whose work explores connection, transformation, and the quiet power of daily life. Through documentary and self-portrait photography, she reflects on identity, motherhood, and emotional resilience—capturing images that feel both raw and poetic. Her work has been exhibited locally and abroad, and is recognised for its gentle intimacy and evocative use of natural light. Sophie’s visual language invites viewers to pause, feel, and find beauty in the overlooked.
✳ Featured image: Yvette Hess is a multidisciplinary artist, writer and mental health advocate is one of the featured artists, participating in Vulvasphere – Woman Beyond the Surface – a Multi-Sensory Exhibition on in Cape Town, at Lumi, Hout Bay. Sponsored content. Images supplied.
