RESERVOIR returns to the 2026 edition of ARCO Madrid in Spain, with a solo presentation by South African artist Marsi van de Heuvel (b. 1987).

 

Find us at booth 9OP12

Professional preview 4, 5 and 6 March (by Invitation)
6 - 8 March, 2026
 

Address: Avda. del Partenón, 5, 28042 Madrid, Spain

Venue: IFEMA MADRID, Halls 7 & 9

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For the Opening section of ARCO Madrid 2026, RESERVOIR presents a solo project by the South African artist Marsi van de Heuvel, centered on her ongoing series, Skoonveld. Skoonveld, translated as “clean field,” refers both to land emptied through forced removals during apartheid and to the systematic erasure of the history and culture of people classified by the regime as “coloured.” This body of work addresses precisely that void: a space marked by expulsion, denial, and the distortion of identity.

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Drawing on a collection of photographs taken by her maternal grandmother and other family members in Upington, Graaff-Reinet, and Umtata, the artist investigates the construction of belonging and memory. The images, which document scenes of domestic and school life, but also special occassions such as weddings, functioned as gestures of affirmation in the face of a dominant narrative that portrayed these communities as inferior. In them, families present themselves as they wished to be seen: dignified, affectionate, and complex.

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Through processes of deconstruction and painterly recomposition, van de Heuvel reassembles fragments of these images, exploring a heritage shaped by racial classifications and displacement. The emphasis on details (gloved hands, a carefully held handbag) highlights strategies of respectability and self-assertion in response to racist labeling. Through oil paint and other media, the artist destabilises stereotypes inherited from apartheid.

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Situated between the intimate and the collective, the work articulates a reflection on identity, race, and belonging in contemporary South Africa. In the absence of a formally recorded history, the project activates the everyday archive as a space of symbolic repair, proposing a critical reconsideration of the past as a necessary condition for imagining a truly democratic national identity.