In conversation with Carmen Joubert, Norval Foundation

“The Mount Nelson and the Norval Foundation share a deep investment in the idea that art should be part of lived experience, woven into the fabric of the everyday rather than set apart from it.”

 - Carmen Joubert

Carmen Joubert

Carmen Joubert is a curator at the Norval Foundation and recently curated Interior Weather, a collaboration with Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel. We had a chat with her about the project, her approach to working within the Mount Nelson’s historic interiors, and her perspective on the current contemporary art scene in Cape Town.

What drew the Norval Foundation to collaborating with the Mount Nelson?

Working with the Mount Nelson has always been important to us, and in many ways, the collaboration felt inevitable. The Mount Nelson and the Norval Foundation share a deep investment in the idea that art should be part of lived experience, woven into the fabric of the everyday rather than set apart from it. The hotel has always been more than a place to stay; it's a space where Cape Town's cultural life has historically gathered and unfolded. For us at Norval, that felt like a natural extension of what we believe about art, that it really belongs in the spaces where people move.

There is also a wonderful exchange at the heart of the partnership. The Mount Nelson provides accommodation for our artists when they're here in South Africa, which is really special. That spirit of mutual generosity is very much part of how we work together.

Works by Ephraim Ngatane. Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town. Image credit  Dani Pepler, courtesy of Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel.

How did you approach the curation and how does the setting of the Mount Nelson speak to and enhance the themes of the exhibition?

I really began with atmosphere rather than art. I did several site visits and walked through the space, wanting to feel it first rather than imposing any kind of thesis onto it. What I was interested in was allowing the works to breathe within the hotel and for guests to encounter them as a shift in feeling rather than a structured narrative, which is something you would typically get from a museum show.

The Mount Nelson's architecture gave me a lot to work with: the rhythm of its corridors, the intimacy of certain rooms, the expansiveness of others, and the way light changes as you move through the building. I thought about how the works would respond, and how some demand attention and presence, while others ask for more quiet and patience. The exhibition’s title, Interior Weather, came from the sense that both the building and the artworks are environments you move through, emotionally as well as physically. The hotel's famous pink facade and its layered, lush interiors became a backdrop against which the contemporary works could assert themselves with real clarity.

Do you have any favourite artworks in the exhibition you would like to highlight?

The two works by Ephraim Ngatane in the reception area were important for the exhibition. They serve as a reminder that the visual intelligence and emotional depth we celebrate in contemporary South African art has roots, and those roots deserve to be seen and honoured in spaces like this one. The musical themes running through those paintings create a real sense of movement and set the tone for how you travel through the rest of the exhibition.

Kate Gottgens’ painting Hot as Hell speaks directly to the title of Interior Weather and I placed it in the tea lounge to make the most of its deceptive accessibility. At first it seems luminous, tropical and inviting, but the longer you sit with it, the more unsettling it becomes. The landscape is dissolving; the heat feels almost hallucinatory. It's a painting about the feeling of intensity rather than its depiction alone, and there's something special about that in a hospitality context.

Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga's Pouvoir effacement (loss of power) is, for me, one of the most powerful works in the exhibition, which inspired me to place it in a quiet corridor leading up to the Red Room. The figures are rendered with such graphic precision and there's almost an architectural quality to the surface, yet the painting holds this enormous emotional charge. It speaks to questions of cultural memory, visibility, and power that feel very urgently contemporary.

Another highlight is Nicholas Hlobo's piece, placed opposite the study room. The title translates roughly to the bond of conversation, and it has an extraordinary presence. The composition is carefully built up with stitched ribbon, leather and thread, and you have to slow down for it. That patience, that craft, feels deeply meaningful in the context of Cape Town and South Africa's rich history of making.

Kate Gottgens, Hot as Hell, Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town. Image credit  Dani Pepler, courtesy of Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel.

Cape Town is an increasingly popular destination for the global art world, as the recent Cape Town Art Fair demonstrated. How do you see the local scene responding to this?

What strikes me most is how the local scene is responding with confidence and a healthy sense of its own terms. Artists, institutions, and collectors here are deeply invested in each other and in the specificity of this place, its complexities, its extraordinary visual culture. The international attention is welcome and the connections are meaningful, but the local scene isn't simply orienting itself toward external validation; it continues to be generative from within.

That said, we face real challenges. In South Africa, there isn't yet a widespread culture of visiting museums, many schools are under-resourced, and many communities have not historically had access to these spaces. At Norval, we try to address this through our Learning Centre, opening our doors to children and families who might not otherwise feel welcome, but there is still so much work to be done.

Installation view, Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel, Cape Town. Image credit  Dani Pepler, courtesy of Mount Nelson, A Belmond Hotel.

What curatorial projects are you currently working on or looking forward to?

I am excited about Kate Gottgens’ exhibition, Unsteady Realms, opening at Norval Foundation in September. She has been creating new works specifically for the show, and we’ve been visiting her studio to see everything come together. That full process, from the initial idea through to watching new work come into being, is something really special. The exhibition will centre on the female, which is very much at the heart of her practice. She works from old photographs and images, and her paintings have this unsettled quality of something lurking, something not quite resolved. She captures that sense of existing as a woman in the in-between, which I think a lot of us will be able to relate to. We're working with Goodman Gallery on this, which is always a wonderful opportunity.

I'm also really looking forward to Eddy Ilunga's upcoming show, which will open at Norval Foundation for the Cape Town Art Fair. We have been working closely with October Gallery in London. Having his work in Interior Weather has only deepened my admiration for what he does, and I think it will be a stunning exhibition.

Website: norvalfoundation.org; belmond.com

Instagram: @norvalfoundation; @belmondmountnelsonhotel

Interview by Sofia Carreira Wham