About
Founded by Raynier de Klerk-Matthee in June of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, ESCAP3 Gallery is a digitally-native practice committed to the advancement of critical thinking and serious play, with focus on Contemporary Art of Africa and its Diasporas. As a hybrid model gallery we host intimate by-appointment exhibitions at our showroom, located 250 meters from the Melkbosstrand beach, simultaneously accessible and available remotely. Situated just 35 kilometers from the city of Cape Town, Melkbosstrand has become a destination renowned for its heritage, fine dining and a seven kilometer stretch of white sand beach surrounded by nature reserves.
At ESCAP3 Gallery we endeavour to nurture creative growth and career development of both young and mid-career artists, whilst providing our clients with informed guidance to cultivate their own meaningful and discerning art collections. These services include identifying the purpose of collecting, the sourcing of desired works or the facilitation of private and site-specific commissions.
Since our founding, key milestones have included participation in the Turbine Art Fair; being awarded Best Online Presentation for the Durban University of Technology (DUT) Arts Research Kaleidoscope & South African Visual Art Historians (SAVAH) Conference: Digi-Fest’09; and receiving coverage from platforms such as Art Network Africa, Contemporary And, the Sunday Times, and Platteland Toe.
To meaningfully complement our social impact, we support vital art institutions located across South Africa such as the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA), the South African National Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA), and the Association for Visual Arts (AVA). Notable collaborations include incubation projects with Contemporary Lab (UK), Stellenbosch Woordfees 2025 Veldhospitaal, the Friends of Valkenberg Trust and The Helsinki Notebooks - Global Dispatches Against Fascism and the Far Right.
ESCAP3 Gallery Consulting Curator
Moshumee Dewoo is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, working on the Locating Global Protest against the Extreme Right: Anti-Fascism, Anti-Racism, and Internationalism in Multiethnic Metropoles (LGP) project, led by Principal Investigator Kasper Braskén and funded by the Research Council of Finland (Project number 355478; 2023–2027).
Dewoo’s academic journey spans various disciplines—including politics, psychology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, economics, literature, technology, communication, and art—, each informing her critical scholarship. Her research, which she solidified during her PhD at the University of Cape Town, explores the history of emancipation in African and diasporic societies throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. Her work highlights how these societies both shape and are shaped by global political and historical processes, offering new insights into their role in global resistance movements and transformations that showcase the global interconnectedness of struggles for freedom and autonomy.
In alignment with her research, Dewoo has taught extensively at the University of Cape Town, guiding undergraduate and postgraduate students through a broad range of themes including the processes and legacies of emancipation, memory and narrative construction, language and identity, race and class dynamics, gender and power relations, post-colonial critique, urbanism in post-colonial societies, and the socio-political movements that have emerged in African and diasporic contexts. Her teaching engages with global political processes and highlights the role of resistance within frameworks of power and oppression.
Dewoo is a consulting curator with ESCAP3 Gallery, South Africa, where she contributes to exhibitions that address issues of socio-political change and artistic expression within the context of African resistance movements. Her curatorial work bridges academic insights with visual and performance art, providing a platform for reflecting on and challenging historical and contemporary narratives of resistance and identity.