CATHY ABRAHAM

(b. 1968; Cape Town, South Africa)

Cathy Abraham is an abstract multi-media artist whose practice encompasses the mediums of film, installation, painting, sculpture, and mixed media. Abraham attended the Michaelis School of Fine Arts, University of Cape Town (UCT), where she graduated with a Master’s in Fine Art with Distinction in 2018. Her work is included in the IZIKO South African National Gallery Collection, the Rupert Collection, the Spier Art Collection in South Africa as well as the Kilbourne collection in South Africa.

“My practice is deeply rooted in repetition as a material prayer. Invoking transformation and healing, these prayers address past sufferings that continue to haunt the present. Appearing as shadows in the overlapping ‘ghosts’ of colliding brushstrokes, such hauntings give form to otherwise formless traumas, the apparitions tracing the wound in its residue. My unfolding engagement with numbers and ritual action is meditative and devotional, a means of transcending the self towards an understanding of the interconnected, miraculous nature of all beings.” Cathy Abraham, 2025

Central to Abraham’s practice is her ritual approach to counting forms, wherein she primarily focuses on the numbers 5, 9, 11, 13, 18, and multiples thereof as a systematic gesture toward ecologies of survival. Abraham “counts brush marks as a form of meditation, allowing the mark of the brush to leave a visual trace as ghosts do.” Rhythm and repetition is further expressed in Abraham’s use of Gematria, an alpha numeric system within the teachings of the Kabbalah, that aids Abraham in her process. Additional themes addressed in Abraham’s work include the environment, changeable ecologies, interconnectedness, intergenerational trauma, cause and effect, movement, time, and space.

Abraham held her first solo exhibition Naked in 2008 with Joao Ferreira Gallery in Cape Town, followed by other solo presentations, including Undying Entanglement, a body of work comprised of film, installation, and paper works exhibited at the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town in 2013. In 2025 Abraham presented A Sacred Matter, at Everard Read, Franschoek, South Africa and in London. Further solo presentations include: Dust from the silver spring presented by Whatiftheworld gallery at Artissima art fair in Turin, Italy in 2025; A Shifted Season, presented by Untitled at FNB Art Joburg, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2024; The Fallen Sparks of Tohu, with IBI Art at Contemporary Istanbul, Turkey; Yielding to the Shadow, with IBI Art at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, South Africa, both in 2023; 22 Pathways at Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa in 2022; Spaces: The Abyss of Deep Time, at The Fourth, Cape Town, South Africa in 2021; A Deeper Kind of Nothing and The Monument at Glen Carlou, Franschoek, South African in 2019.

Selected group exhibitions include Investec Cape Town Art Fair with Locus Projects (2025); RMB Latitudes presented by RESERVOIR, Johannesburg, South Africa (2024); What I feel when I think about the cosmos (2023) at Everard Read Franschoek, South Africa; Seduction (2022) at Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa; The Great South African Nude, at Everard Read, Johannesburg; Conversations with Irma (2019) at Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa and Domestic Departures at The Forge, Cape Town (2011).

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

2025     A Sacred Matter, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2023     The Fallen Sparks of Tohu, solo booth, Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair, with Locus projects, Istanbul,Turkey
             Yielding to the Shadow, solo booth, Investec Cape Town Art Fair, with IBI Art Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

2022     22 Pathways, Cubicle Series, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2021     9 Spaces: The abyss of deep time, The Fourth, Cape Town, South Africa

            Featured artist Turbine Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa

2019     A Deeper Kind of Nothing, Gallery at Glen Carlou, Stellenbosch, South Africa

2018     A Deeper Kind of Nothing, Michaelis Galleries, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

2013     Undying Entanglement, South African Jewish Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

2012     Trace, In Toto Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa

2011     Essence, The White House, Plettenberg Bay, South Africa

2010     Memory Stains, IBI Art Alliance Francaise, Johannesburg, South Africa

2009     Stripped, IBI Art Alliance Francaise, Johannesburg, South Africa

2008     Naked, Joao Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2024     Artissima International Contemporary Art Fair, Turin with Whatiftheworld gallery
            RMB Latitudes Art Fair with Reservoir projects, JHB, South Africa
            Winter Collection, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

2023     What I Feel When I Think About The Cosmos, Everard Read, Franschhoek, South Africa

Winter, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2022     Seduction, Everard Read, Cape Town, South Africa

2019     Conversations with Irma, curated by Christopher Peter, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

2015     Art/Out of the Ordinary, curated by Marilyn Martin, Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town, South Africa

2014     Seeking Eden, curated by Margie Murgatroyd, Casa Labia, Cape Town, South Africa

2013     My Mother’s Garden, Arts on Main, Johannesburg, South Africa

            In Good Company, curated by Michael Chandler, Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa

2011     Domestic Departures, The Forge, Cape Town, South Africa