Kay-Leigh's Exhale:
Parthenon in the Secret Garden

Johannesburg, South Africa

23.05.2025 — 25.05.2025

RMB Latitudes Art Fair

Curated by Lebo Kekana

Kay-Leigh Fisher

Drawing from two related series by the artist, Fisher’s works depict vast natural landscapes that hold space for ephemeral, reflective moments through which she explores the idea of profound spiritual connection, as related to shared space, ancestry and concepts of multiplicity.

Her figures, whether collective or in solitude, are pictured in a transcendent state of harmony — both within themselves and in relation to others and their surrounding environment. They’re poised with a self-assured sense of self, realised only through the capacity to recognise and interact with the varied aspects of themselves. They also hold within them space for a connection to an essence of being beyond the mundane — an essence tethered to a profound understanding of oneself as an extension of The Divine, and consciously present in an experience which far outweighs what is plainly perceived.

The artist prompts a sensibility to the elaborate connections between a single entity, such as the viewer, and all that surrounds and holds them. This idea is first proposed through the experience of the figures in the painted landscapes that extend from Kay-Leigh’s imaginaries, both lived and manifested, and is echoed by the context the work exists in.

Allowing the viewer to embody the experience of the subjects they observe, this site-specific installation — in a Parthenon that seems as though a sculptural entity carefully placed on high ground above what feels like a secret garden, and nestled in lush eruptions of flora — offers also a vantage point of the expansive landscape of Shepstone Gardens, encouraging a moment of quiet refection, inspiring a sense of wonder, and prompting a consideration of humanity’s relationship to the natural world though the spaces one forges for themselves.