Sea Point's President Hotel has a new resident, and she works in oil paint. From 1 September 2026 to 11 January 2027, South African artist Zarah Cassim takes over the hotel's communal spaces with a selection of her paintings as part of In Residence, an ongoing exhibition series run with the non-profit Art School Africa.
Cassim's work sits somewhere between a postcard and a daydream. She builds landscapes in layers of oil, letting natural forms blur and re-emerge through shifting haze, so familiar scenes start to feel uncertain. Colours move from soft blush pinks to deep earthy greens, and the effect is less about documenting a place than capturing how a place lingers in memory after the details have faded.
The exhibition spans several formats — oil on canvas, board and Fabriano paper — and ranges in scale from the expansive The Dance I to small pieces like Sherbet, Berry and Bleed. Cassim, who completed her Fine Art Honours at the University of Cape Town in 2014, describes her brushwork as instinctive and tied to her state of mind: bold and loose one moment, tentative and detailed the next. Her career has taken her beyond South Africa too, with exhibitions in Australia, Spain and France, and in 2021 she co-founded Hotel Hernandez Art School, a peer-to-peer programme whose graduate exhibition she later curated at the Iziko South African National Gallery.
For guests, the appeal is simple: you can wander through a free gallery without leaving your hotel. The In Residence series exists precisely to pull contemporary Cape Town art out of traditional galleries and into everyday spaces, giving local artists visibility and giving travellers something more interesting to look at than the usual lobby wallpaper. If you're staying at the President over the 2026-27 summer season, the paintings will simply be there — part of breakfast, part of the walk to the pool.
Who is this for? Anyone combining a Cape Town trip with an interest in the local art scene, especially travellers who find commercial galleries intimidating or tightly scheduled. Hotel-based exhibitions like this one let you engage on your own terms, coffee in hand. And with the run stretching through the festive season into mid-January, it fits neatly alongside a beach holiday or a Table Mountain hike.
Art School Africa, the Cape Town non-profit behind the collaboration, uses the series to build platforms for emerging and established local artists, so attending — even casually — supports that pipeline. Keep an eye on how the hotel rotates future residents in the series; it's shaping up to be a recurring reason to check what's on the walls before you book.
Story via Getaway South Africa.
