The Vanilla Sisters Lunch Club: Our Portraits, Our Stories grew out of Véronique Hoog’s long-term relationships with women living with albinism in South Africa.
What began as a portrait project developed through regular lunches, conversations and shared experiences. Hoog paints each sitter at large scale in oil on metal, using a direct frontal composition that gives the women a strong physical presence in the gallery.
The portraits are accompanied by another form of representation: the women’s own voices. QR codes give visitors access to recorded accounts in which each sitter speaks about her life, experiences, ambitions and achievements in her own words.
That combination matters. The paintings ask viewers to look, while the recordings complicate any assumptions that might be formed from appearance alone. The exhibition acknowledges the prejudice and social stigma experienced by people with albinism, but does not reduce its subjects to those experiences.
A table setting within the exhibition refers to the lunches that became central to the project. It marks the time spent talking and listening before and alongside the making of the portraits, and the relationships from which the work developed.
Hoog reduces the proposition to two words in her artist statement: “Look. Listen.” The exhibition gives equal weight to both.
Images courtesy of Wits Art Museum and Véronique Hoog.
Exhibition Details
The Vanilla Sisters Lunch Club: Our Portraits, Our Stories
Véronique Hoog
Wits Art Museum (WAM), Johannesburg
Exhibition Dates
15 September – 21 November 2026
Walkabout
Saturday, 21 November 2026
12:00–13:00
