Adele van Heerden

Adele van Heerden was born in 1989 in Cape Town, South Africa, where she now lives and works. After graduating with a degree in Fine Arts from the Ruth Prowse School of Art in 2010, Van Heerden continued her studies at the University of South Africa, obtaining a BA in History, Politics and Art History. In 2015, she graduated from the University of Cape Town with an Honours Degree in Curatorship. Van Heerden is thus able to bring together ideas from her undergraduate fields of study in her fine arts practice. After Van Heerden's studies she worked as a curator of a gallery, which she left in 2018 to pursue her fine arts practice full-time. In 2023 she was selected as one of the ART.CO.ZA Artists to Watch. Other accolades include two silver medals for the SA Wine and Beer Label Awards (2021, 2022) for collaborative projects, and being a finalist for the StateoftheArt Gallery Award (2019). Van Heerden has completed residencies at Cité Internationale des Arts Paris (2020, 2023), Cape Town Art Residency (2023) and David Krut Projects in Johannesburg (2021). With camera in hand, van Heerden sets out to discover, explore and document environments, with a particular focus on man-made and built environments that work in symbiosis or juxtaposition with the natural world. Her subject matter tends to be urban, natural landscapes and interior scenes. She paints and draws the photos she takes onto the back of translucent drafting film. She describes her work as a way of reimagining her own life experiences.