Laundry staple Sunlight soap is the medium featured in an upcoming art exhibition that pays homage to South African women who have been killed by their partners.

Multimedia artist Andrea Walters drew on her own experience of domestic violence and daily stories of femicide and intimate partner violence (IPV) to create #OverMyDeadBody, which will open at the Durban Art Gallery on Thursday.

Over several months Walters carved soap bars to reproduce the mouths of 50 women who were killed by their partners, including former model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp, Western Cape township tourism pioneer Vicky Ntozini and Gauteng makeup artist Tshegofatso Pule. The sculptures rest on Perspex shelves with suspended death shrouds...