Artists from South Africa

"O: Why did you leave sculpture for pure reflection? I mean thoughts, language and speech."

"I would be at a gallery opening and someone would ask me: “so what are you doing these days?” I would reply, “I am interested in the word ‘time’.” Later, someone would ask: “But how can time be your art?” And I might have replied, ‘as it is spoken: “time”.’ Another day, someone might have asked, having heard I was using time as my art: “So what are you working with these days?” and I would reply: “time”. I am interested in the idea […] I like the work when it is spoken: “time”.’ And so the work was used over and over again."

"Language is the most formless means of expression. Its capacity to describe concepts without physical or visual references carries us into an advanced state of abstraction."

"By adopting language as their exclusive medium, Weiner, Barry, Wilson, Kosuth and Art & Language were able to sweep aside the vestiges of authorial presence manifested by formal invention and the handling of materials"

"In 1968 Ian Wilson made his final sculpture. Since then, he has explored the idea of oral communication as an art form... Wilson’s work is very hard to track down, even in terms of documentation. He has been compared to the Socratic philosophers but if there is a similarity between his practice and theirs, it probably lies mainly in the fact that everything we have from that period of philosophy takes the form of secondary fragments embedded in other texts. Wilson’s work functions almost like archaeological or geological evidence: it consists of objects that we examine in order to deduce, from scanty clues, what must have happened."

"Conceptual artist Ian Wilson (1940 in Durban, South Africa) has been interested in spoken language as an art form since 1968. He describes his own work as ‘oral communication’, and later on as ‘discussion’. At Wilsons own request, his work is never recorded either as film or audio in order to preserve the transient nature of the spoken word."

"“Nineteen people may love your work, but the twentieth one will hate it and will tell you so; you cannot allow that to affect you. That may sound trite, but there is huge risk in letting criticism get you down.”"

"“My dream was to be an artist and to earn enough money to survive from my art … I realized that I would have to risk it at some point, or end up spending the rest of my life wondering whether I could make it”"

"Criticism is inevitable. Not everyone will appreciate your work. But don’t let one detractor’s negativity deter you. Stay resilient."

"Criticism is part of the process, but don’t let it hinder your progress."

"One of the things that irritates me the most is that my occupation will be considered 'the hobby of the mayor's wife."

"My development as an artist in Israel and abroad has nothing to do with my husband, not with the people around him, not with opening doors. I don't use his connections to achieve anything or for someone to make my life easier. It's an iron rule for me, black and white, no gray."

"If someone pushes me into a place that isn't right for me, like labeling me and asking me what genre I'm painting in, I'll also get angry and say, 'What are you trying to put me in a box? I'm not willing to be there.'"

"When I draw on one side of the slide, I have to plan in my head what the other side will look like. It's not easy."

"I want to create a real dialogue between the old and the new, between the architecture and my paintings. My works respond to the strong presence of painting in the palace, and especially to one of its treasures – a nude fresco created by Giorgione. For years I worked in the studio observing the naked body, striving to understand the movement of the line in depth. In Palazzo Grimanni, in every corner you encounter line and color, architecture and painting that connect to each other and complement each other."

"When I paint, I explore the interior and the exterior at the same time: I go outside, look at the colors, the nature, the world. And then I synthesize what I see into the face, into the personal, into the deep. If what I do doesn't excite me and I don't touch places of pain, pleasure and emotion, that's problematic. As soon as the mind enters the process, I stop everything and put it aside. It's clear to me that I'm working on the very honest places myself, and someone from the outside sees it and feels it."

"Beverly is really a good artist – the real thing. She has a natural hand and her own artistic language, and we will hear about her not only as the mayor's wife."

"Let no one make the mistake of thinking that Bibi is some millionaire woman who was looking for a new hobby, she is an artist at heart. She is a very, very serious and very, very good painter - one of the most dedicated students I have had. She draws fantasticly, which is a great compliment – not everyone who paints also knows how to draw."

"“In this show I want to talk about light and a type of fine tensile strength, perhaps a feminine strength, seductive but tough.""

"I chose to force myself to look here at what it means to be a white South African woman artist in America and such far flung places for thirty odd years."

"It has always been the same refrain, really, the struggle to meld two selves, two deep senses of awareness, to make an acceptably sane harmony of the two (or three or four ...)"

"With the use of the organic juxtaposed with the hard edge, I want the pieces to balance and create their own zing .... and comfort me."

"I am naturally drawn to light - like a plant I will inadvertently find myself turned towards the light. I have always done this, even as a child. Hopefully I will continue to do this and perhaps one day simply disappear in a flash of light.”"

"Just as there are many ideas and concepts one has to share, so there are many media and forms to choose as vehicles. It’s sort of like a visual conversation, different audiences, different languages, different places. One decides upon the most efficient and pleasing ‘fit’."

""We, as artists, go along, searching for our own truth and so our collective creativity becomes our personal and cultural history. We are simply visual communicators.”"

"“Myfanwy Bekker’s work has been as consistent and heart-felt as any artist I have ever known. In the twenty four years I have known her, she has continually included observations on her surroundings, her South African heritage and her love of nature in every artistic endeavour. She is spontaneous in her application of paint, giving her images a soul - filled with emotion. Her understanding of materials makes it easy for her to translate ideas into paintings or sculptural work that capture the sentiment she wants to convey. She often includes neon in organic configurations that intertwine with clay, twigs, actual canvas or other structural elements that she has painted. Myfanwy’s South African background is ever-present in her work. Her love of the country and her upbringing are inescapable trademarks of this wonderful artist!”"

"“Myfanwy Bekker, the artist, the woman, is a source of light. She uses pencil and paintbrush with more immediacy and ease than most use words to tell the story of their lives. Her art is lyrical and soulful. There is beauty and delight, while also commenting on the severity of our human condition. Myfanwy’s experiences of South Africa, Texas, New Mexico and California, the landscape of the earth and the hearts and minds of each place’s inhabitants are all blended in her paintings...”"

""Bekker’s diverse artworks capture metaphorically her passion for transcending boundaries and revealing both the strength and fragility of the human condition.”"

"“ ...her extraordinary versatility in whatever medium she chooses, be it paint, clay, wood or glass projects her ability yo meld the cerebral with the emotional and the visual .....”"

"“I think everybody is a post-colonial artist; we’re all living in post-colonial societies.”"

"“My focus is to separate what has created the self [and] what is the representation of personality and group identity.”"

"Life itself is quite ‘kaleidoscopic’ and surreal. Perhaps as an artist or a ‘self,’ it is an assemblage of possibilities, probabilities and the real as more strange than the fiction. The fictions also are too heavy."

"Real life requires one to perform many adjectives (for example being woman/happy/doctor/young/in love/friend/older sister....there are varying conventions that dictate how certain adjectives are activated), and for people or objects to participate in the world, i guess they have to perform--well, i guess we make objects perform--through their use, their place in language. i am interested in objects performing passively...alluding in a very scattered way to disparate things, somehow dancing their colours, textures, thingness with other things...and their thingnesses too."

"“What struck us was the way in which Dineo managed to make work that was very personal, intimate even, but did so with very common materials.”"

"Her work revolves around the process of creation, rather than a belief in research or a particular canon. Simply put, she learns what the piece will be by making it."

"“We were drawn to her nuanced and delicate work at the sixth edition of the Marrakech Biennale last year and are thrilled by working with her this year in Rotterdam to place a bookend to our Para | Fictions series.”"

"“Certain situations in life push you toward extreme decisions,”"

"“While appearing to subscribe to minimalist strategies, Breitz on the other hand owes much to pop. Her work brings the sparse conceptual idiom of the former to bear on the colourful realm of the latter. From the perspective of art history, her method appears as a unique, if not cacophonous, marriage of Sol LeWitt’s formulaic wall-drawings to Warhol’s production line of silk-screened Marilyn Monroes, freshly cooing out of the Factory.”"

"“A recycler at heart, Breitz scavenges the overwhelming remains of popular visual culture, applies a highly reductive editing process to them and ends up with another – and more primary – set of materials. Like the crushed Coke can, the final product is a mere sliver of its former self: distinct enough to be recognisable and yet so distorted that we balk at the memory of its original form and our pleasure in using it. Yet Breitz’s work, however simple in its execution, is far from simplistic.""

"I work at night because the night doesn't have shadows."

"We are grateful for her rich life and for the time she always spent with other people."

"I will remember her for always putting beauty and harmony above anything else. That remains a strong memory."

"What she passed on to me – in fact, it was what I had always experienced of her – was her sense of things."

"If contemporary art is defined as ‘art that is created now’, then the Spier Contemporary is the visual and aural barometer of what it is like to live in South Africa in 2010."

"Populism and opportunism are the order of the day and all manner of insincerities abound – none of which bring us any closer to finding ways to solve the real problems of the day – poverty, hunger, unemployment, our lack of solidarity, community and ethics, the need for better systems of accountability and governance."

"It seems to me however that its greatest contribution is in giving us art as another language to understand and express ourselves, especially during this time when the conventional political discourse is severely limited. And it’s not all serious, thank goodness. Humour, irony and sly jokes abound in many of the works that cast a jaundiced eye on our contemporary leaders and problems."

"“An investigation of light and shadow, of nature, our behaviors, the conscious and the subconscious, connection and dissonance, the outside world and the inside world, the phases of the moon from fullness to absence, creativity and receptivity, sound and silence. An interdependence of the two.”"

"I am not religious but I pray through my work to unknown devils and gods. I look for my soul in colors and empty my being through parables of rusted, lost metal doors."

"In empty buildings that felt like spiritual experiences, exploring holy chambers of neglected architecture... finding something so beautiful in what society disregards, and bringing to life that which usually people throw away or ignore."

"Miners are waiting for justice. Workers are waiting for a living wage. People are waiting for service delivery. Refugees are waiting for assistance. Men are waiting for jobs. We are all waiting for an honest politician. So many people are waiting for others to do things first. To take the blame. To do things for them. To take the fall. To build the country. To admit defeat. There has been so much waiting in this country that much time has been lost."

"We have become so distanced from nature, so these murals are an attempt to reconnect us with the natural world."

"There's an inherent irony in recreating nature on cement, so the series is a nostalgic reminder of what we've lost but also an attempt to reintegrate that into the present,"

"“We forget that the dividing lines specifying countries were merely drawn by politically hungry men. In reality, the earth is open. There are no countries, no borders, it belongs to no one. We are transient visitors and should travel as we please,""

"“Through her works, FAITH XLVII leads a spiritual search and offers the visitors to follow her on the winding path to serenity. Light and shadow are intertwined in her art and the chiaroscuro explored by the artist is ambivalent. Deeply meditative, it invites us to pause.”"

"“FAITH XLVII’s work questions inner duality and the ambivalence of the world. Shadows intertwined with light, her work is highly inspired by Buddhism, connected to nature, but also haunted by the ghost of post-traumatic stress due to her South African origins. Through her creations, the exploration of the notion of consciousness makes us go through the worst as well as the best of the human experience.”"

"Mirroring our contradictions, her installations encourage us to turn our inner gaze towards the animality within us. It is only by listening to the non-human in us, by letting nature express itself in culture, that we can reinvent the world, the artist suggests."

"A South African artist whose textured imagery brings spirituality and nature to the foreground of urban environments."

"A rare incantation of both the earthly and the transcendent."

"Deeply profound visions existing as physical aesthetic gifts for other viewers."

"Equally at home in grimy alleys as she is in a studio, she creates murals that are both breathtaking and poignant. I challenge anyone to look at her work and not feel a little overawed by her talent."

"“Diamonds are so polished and precious and usually associated with jewellery. When they are set against the unevenness of the bone, it’s quite interesting,”"

"“I’m challenging the conventional thought of an African curio,”"

"Her works are designed for the high end luxury market, but also have a playful and girly charm."

"Her 2013 collection "Diamond Dreaming" included bracelets, necklaces and pendants inspired by the Islamic Hamsa motif as well as keys, crowns and peace signs in 9ct and 18ct white, yellow and rose gold."

"Her range of Skullchmey exotic animal skulls of crocodile, baboon, caracul are dipped in liquid precious metals in a technique she has developed herself. Her metal embalming process leaves the exotic animal skulls in an antiqued patina finish that is already being copied by others."

"'Waste at Work combines social awareness, environmental concerns, cultural diversity and visual art in a single project that reflects the heterogeneous population of South Africa.""

""Jeanne Hoffman and Liza Grobler have collaborated on a number of projects over the past five years – all of these have been visual reactions to so-called “development” and “progress”."

"Her work resides in many notable collections including the Jeanetta Blignaut Art Consultancy Collection."

"She has participated in close to a hundred group shows both in South Africa and abroad - in Italy, Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, Spain, the United States and Finland. She attended residencies and workshops in the US, Norway, Finland and Switzerland."

"Grobler' work often incorporates traditional craft techniques such as beadwork and she has collaborated with The Quebeka Bead Studio to produce beaded works."

"The physical, conceptual, mental or temporal flexibility that the three projects propose de-construct the sacredness of national memory narratives (shaped strongly by collective traumas and their political exploitation)."

"In the context of South Africa, these questions inevitably touch upon the political and historical disposition of the space, as the historical surroundings inform us on a traumatic past of apartheid."

"Artistic practices of performance in contemporary art and theater, through reenactments, involve the public in activities that question the status quo, mobilize, and render visible that, which has been obscured by the official gaze."

"The past is part of our identity and eve as i sit in Europe thousands miles away from my country, my mind is focused on my ancestors, my past and my culture."

"Her work, inspired by European rural life and nuns from the Sisters of Mercy order, achieved international recognition, with her Walking Nuns painting selling thousands of copies worldwide."

"She was one of seven artists representing contemporary South African art in Lisbon. Simultaneously, she was commissioned to create four abstract mural panels, titled The Discovery of Gold in the Witwatersrand, for the President Hotel in Johannesburg."

"Aileen's exploration into steel led to kinetic sculptures, introducing movement and dynamic elements to her art."

"The spiritual life of the Malians, marked by acceptance of fate, inspired her to appreciate the harmony of living with circumstances."

"The resilience and stoicism of the Mandingo kingdom, along with the vibrant markets of Bamako and Timbuktu, shifted her focus to capturing daily life with urgency and authenticity. The spiritual life of the Malians, marked by acceptance of fate, inspired her to appreciate the harmony of living with circumstances."

""I started because of a dream. It took a very long time, because I didn't understand it well. This was in 1965 and in 1974, I started the work"."

"If nothing happens, our children will die suffering, like their grandparents. We sacrifice, but we are not seeing the changes."

"Some youths are lazy and addicted to alcohol and drug abuse. That is also killing our country,"

"This is the picture of a woman who, after some differences with her husband, embarks on a lonely journey with food over her head for her child,"

"These days, people are killing each other and killing children as well. It is very disturbing. We are living in a society that needs leadership."

"I believe that artwork should not be hidden, but the manner in which we have been robbed, it keeps one worried that it's better to keep one's work on the shelves,"

"Her skill made her the first black woman, and the only Venda woman in South Africa, to become a famous wood carver. She also began to create works which followed more contemporary themes."

"Her work contemplates the feeling of social rejection, censure, and disapproval that comes with diverging from the established guidelines of accepted and expected behaviour."

"Her figures of traditional ceremonies, women with babies, and those that capture daily life around her reflect profound expressiveness and mastering of her craft. She conveys the experience of apartheid from a Venda women’s perspective focusing in the exploration of her origins, displacement, race, and sex."

"“Ndebele painting comes from a context of architecture. It is the painting of the house.""

"“Geometry and pattern is a theme that just permeates African art,”"

"Cushing, Nathan (17 September 2014). "South African artist painting commissioned murals at VMFA". RVA News. Retrieved 24 March 2025."

"“I want them to take away a sense of excitement, a sense of how vibrant the arts are in Africa,”"

"This culture must not die. Our young people are vandalising our traditions. This is why I try to motivate them"

"“Our young people don’t wear the clothes or respect their forefathers, the girls have hair extensions and wear western clothes. This does not make me feel comfortable. They are vandalising our traditions. This is why I talk to them, try to motivate them with my travels and teach them too about Aids.”"

""I love to travel, but I love most to come home again. It makes me happy if people like Ndebele art.”"

"“Ndebele art is naturally grandiose in form and only needed the concept of motion added.”"

"“My art has evolved from the tribal tradition of decorating our homes. The patterns I have used on the BMW Art Car marry tradition to the essence of BMW.”"

"“I always watched my mother and grandmother when they were decorating the house,”"

"“The original patterns that were painted on the houses in the past were part of a ritual of Ndebele people to announce events like a birth, death, wedding, or when a boy goes off to the initiation school. I started painting on canvas and board as I realized not everybody will be able to see the Ndebele painting in Mpumalanga where I live, and I felt I need to take it to them to see. This is how my work started to be exhibited in museums and galleries around the world.”"

"Cashdan, Marina (23 September 2016). "Esther Mahlangu Is Keeping Africa's Ndebele Painting Alive". Artsy. Retrieved 24 March 2025."

"“In the old days, the decoration on the houses was always done with natural pigment and cow dung as that was the only material available,”"

"“When looking at a Ndebele mural, people get a smile of amazement on their faces. And if they watch me paint, they can’t believe that I don’t use a ruler to paint the lines, and that my hand is so steady, even at my age. If people see the bright colors, they are happy. And it makes me happy as well, as I love to paint; it is in my heart and in my blood.”"

"“To paint is in my heart and in my blood,”"

"“When you get married, you paint your first house. It’s very important to have straight lines and not zigzag lines because your family members will come and look. If your lines are perfectly straight, then you are a very good wife and can look after your family.”"

"“Every single afternoon when they went to have a nap, I’d try to paint. I got into trouble every day until eventually they realized that in my heart I wanted to paint.”"

"Mun-Delsalle, Y.-Jean. "Esther Mahlangu, One Of South Africa's Most Famous Artists, Perpetuates Traditional Ndebele Painting". Forbes. Retrieved 24 March 2025."

"“What many find interesting about my artworks is that although they are based on traditional Ndebele designs, they are still very modern and current. They can fit into a home or office anywhere in the world and don’t appear dated.”"

"“I love to paint and have been doing it my whole life. I will paint anything, as long as there’s a benefit where my culture can be preserved, where somebody growing up can value and never forget their Ndebele roots.”"

"“As children grow up today, they’re losing their culture. I don’t want my culture to die. That’s why I teach children Ndebele art. They must know their culture and where they come from.”"

"“Being recognized at home is such a blessing. It shows that my people still see the great work that I do,”"

""As an artist, her ...composition is more compact, more engaging and complex than that of her contemporaries, the borders more complicated. She has a tendency to frame her pattern motifs.”"

"Her works are in major private collections including that of The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) of Jean Pigozzi and in many Western museums. Despite being an internationally recognized artist, Esther Mahlangu still presently lives in her village in close and constant contact with her culture."

"Mahlangu follows a local tradition through which this particular type of painting technique is handed down in the family, communicated, learned and transmitted only by women (in the past)"

"Esther Mahlangu has worked tirelessly exposing and developing her talent travelling around the world, and she is very passionate about sharing her knowledge with the younger generation so that she leaves a legacy that lives on for generations to come."

"“Since being a young child, Esther had a will to paint,”"

""The art is practiced almost entirely by women, likely passed down when girls became adolescents. Esther couldn’t wait. (She was born an artist),”"

"“Esther is the person who has taken the local art of design and painting in the Ndebela region and [brought] it to a global context,”"

"“She has spanned the horizon of both painting locally and painting globally.”"

"One of the most famous artists in South Africa, Mahlangu is a living tourist attraction, although visitors are few and far between in this far-flung village, two hours’ drive from the nearest city. And she is indisputably the most honoured gogo – Zulu for grandmother – of the Ndebele who remain in the Mpumalanga homelands."

"“I am very proud of her,” says her son, William. “She is our queen, queen of Ndebele, and our happy mascot.”"

"“She was trying to blend tradition with modernity, so while there is a family trajectory there, it was also her and her generation who took this one step further, making this now-recognized Ndebele contribution to contemporary art,”"

"“It’s somewhat problematic when looking at South African art and Western art—with mostly Western art taking and African art giving. The way that African art was appropriated is more of a taker’s attitude. I want to see the art history written that pays as much tribute to the originality of this South African heritage that we also see in Mahlangu’s art as to Keith Haring.”"

"I followed my intuition and started to learn all kinds of art techniques to assist the patients by art therapy. Weaving I liked best. I felt very little satisfaction when following fixed patterns or working out of the themes that teachers provided me with. I could feel that was not my thing."

"When I work I see the picture and my hand will go over the wool and I know where I will have the image. Sometimes I change it again and take out all the wool, start over till I am happy with it. It is a slow process, for painters it must be easier."

"These animals are markers of economic wellbeing and serve as spiritual links with the ancestors."

"In her tapestries she gets in touch with her memories of the numerous Zulu folktales that spoke, through granny’s voice, of times immemorial. She uses no premeditated composition or logical storyline. Scenes get mixed up or flow into one overall vision that triggers the spirit of fantasy."

"The essence of being South African, with all its issues, angst, triumphs and glorious celebrations has been distilled into a unique exhibition which opened at Spier in Stellenbosch"

"“Maybe the greatest yearning of South Africans is to find a canvas on which to express themselves,”"

"“It is through exhibitions like this that we become a country that is grappling with its soul, rather than a country of one dimensional theme parks”"

"“Art plays a significant role in the transformation of our country,”"

"“Exhibitions like this break down barriers and create linkages between us in the unique mix that is South Africa”."

"“A place of collective residential isolation, where the living environment becomes a site for production. The work that has come from this time deals with the act of conversation in an intimate environment and the physical realization of our online relationship on our website.""

""As collaborators, we are interested in the dialogue that occurs between two artists and how this connection manifests – both as a competitive and a supportive force. We find that our work illustrates both of these qualities, and shows the bond that can come from knowing another’s work as well as your own. We approach our individual work in distinctive ways - one subjective and intimate, another cerebral and pragmatic. Together, these traits play off each other, forming a new space in which to create.”"

"“I was blown away by how people were creating digital art with all this software I’d never heard of, and communicating just using their art,”"

"“I came from a traditional art background, and seeing people use technology to tell stories really captivated me.”"

"“What we were learning was catered to more of a Western narrative, and we weren’t really seeing an African narrative being taught or explored, or even encouraged,”"

"“In the textbooks, there was traditional and primitive African art, nothing contemporary, or in the context of advertising or digitisation.”"

"“I didn’t think anyone that came from where I came from would be listened to.”"

"“In the beginning, I didn’t think my voice would be enough, or that anyone that came from where I came from would even be listened to.”"

"“That’s when the fire got lit underneath me, because it wasn’t being done, and I thought it was overdue.”"

"“It was the first time we saw black people create something so uniquely theirs, and so visually beautiful, that spoke of all the things we learn at home, in a way that was so proud and unashamed. It was so far away from us, but we could relate to everything we saw in the music, fashion and sitcoms – it still felt like home somehow.”"

"“It’s always been a part of my journey since I was little, so it felt like it came full circle, and confirmed what I’m doing. And now my parents believe that this is a real job!”"

"“I feel immense pressure because I really want to represent my identity correctly and authentically, make sure it’s being celebrated and not exploited for monetary gain or trendiness. But I take comfort in knowing that my community really supports me, and is really encouraging me to continue to do what I do. And I trust my own decisions.”"

"“When I started my (art) journey, I was really inspired by hip-hop, rap and basketball, and I’d always seen this theme of Nike Air Force 1s and Air Jordans,”"

"“I’d always associated that with Black people really creating groundbreaking, global, effective work and I really wanted to be a part of it.”"

"“Hair has been something that’s important for not only my family but a lot of African people as well; it’s really like the center of our identity in a way. So, when I started drawing, I’d draw people having really fresh haircuts or beautiful braids.”"

"“Within all of my work you’ll see nuggets of a zigzag and that represents cornrows that you see in beautiful patterns; you’ll see combs, you’ll see people that look familiar to myself and my narrative,”"

"“We need to see more female designers in the industry. There’s not enough,”"

"“I’m extremely proud to be a Black female African illustrator because this was a space, I’ll say 10 years ago, there weren’t a ton of us there,”"

"“There’s a certain way in which we tell stories that I think the world not only will enjoy, but I think the world needs.”"

""Shoebox collections like Poppy’s tower are a source of pride within sneaker culture, according to Wells. By having those boxes serve as her “vision board,”"

"The first time I learnt about Karabo Poppy Moletsane and her work was four years ago when she was unveiled as one of the African creatives, who collaborated with a major European brand."

"Among those creatives were the impeccable Manthe Ribane and Nonku Phiri, I knew there and then that she was a force; given the calibre of brilliant women she was featured alongside. Her work was impressive then and still is now; she has not looked back since."

"I don’t get why these kids think they’re the first. There’s a lacking in historical referencing and reverencing. Their art doesn’t take any risks. It doesn’t love itself. It doesn’t love people. It’s only interested in power; not even power, it’s all vanity. And I don’t think people are looking at books enough."

"Artists have got to be the interpreters and intermediaries in spaces. So they consume information, they go into these vile, volatile environments and you take all of it. They reconfigure it and put it through their being and then they create these things that cause a shift vibrationally, spirituality, intellectually and emotionally for the people that engage with it. I am also a glutton for information. I consume information all the time. I read. It infiltrates the work."

"Making work is a documentation of a journey - each stage, each process, each dilemma has to be worked through. At one time I felt pressured to do a lot of things at the same time, but now I want to take one step at a time. When you make an artwork you're not just doing something at that moment, you're contributing to an entire history of artmaking."

"In Podor in Senegal, the place where I grew up, everyone is an artist because art in Africa is not a commercial enterprise but is part of life itself."

"Let me explain. When I was young, I used to watch the fishermen by the banks of the Senegal river. They were working close to the desert in intense heat, and whenever they stopped working they would start to sing."

"In Podor, people sing naturally about their experiences, their lives and their relationships. It is not just musicians and singers who perform. Everybody has a part to play - even children are allowed to join in if they have the inspiration. It doesn't matter if your voice is not the finest; everyone is involved."

"Musicians are respected, but only in the context that the music itself belongs to the community - not to the person who is playing an instrument or singing a song."

"Computers and digital technology are becoming very important to African artists, just as elsewhere. I see it with the impact of hip-hop across the continent. You can see it beginning to have an impact on the visual arts."

"I stopped looking at art for a while, actually. It’s no longer this holistic thing that you’re looking at. It’s a statement. It’s about poverty, it’s about the global crises, post-colonial this, that. Tick box, tick box, tick box. It’s got all these fucking issues and I’m just looking at shit. There’s no kind of material engagement."

"The performance that happens as an artist within that space becomes a political decision to keep the work alive, relevant and moving. If I didn’t I would be ostracised even more."

"I want to know how do I keep expanding what’s possible in the legal range with my body. It’s kind of theatre for adrenaline junkies. Once you start performance art, you keep chasing the dragon."

"People from all over the world, who are the most rigorous thinkers, were making work out of stuff in real time. That’s not necessarily paint on canvas; it’s material and matter that speaks. It blew my mind. I cried for a year. I couldn’t. I had a breakdown because I realised the depth of the deception and how far and controlled it was. Seeing people of colour make art in my lifetime blew me the fuck away."

"The work that I’m making happens, stylistically, because of all the financial restrictions that I have to go through in order to make it. Sometimes I hustle, I ask for favours. Sometimes I’m using a lesser kind of grade of material, but I know it’s like that because of the necessity of having the work made. That adds a richness to the work."

"There are more gentle ways to make art."

"When you start to perform a particular character for the media or historians, you get locked into them. So even when you start writing, there’s no space for your words to be published. Now that I’m an academic, I can say what I like and write what I like. When I write what I like, it’s going to be fucken dangerous."

"Tracey Rose is not a practitioner who jumps at every curatorial opportunity offered her, and has been known to withdraw from more than one exhibition if the circumstances have not seemed right."

"I first met Tracey Rose eleven years ago. I was researching the connections between healing and art in the work of contemporary artists from Africa. There was something in her art that spoke of the shaman, the alchemist, the revealer of wounds, the reorderer of worlds. From the beginning, I loved all the facets of her and of her work: the mischief and joy and delight of the girl; the boundless sensuality and wisdom of the woman; the vastness of spirit, placing her somewhere between this plane and another, channeling perpetually distant truths, some more gentle and others with more violent vibratory force."

"Rose embodies various caricatures of beauty, from porn star Cicciolina to the European Queen, invoking those forms of masking and masquerade that in their grotesque heightening of contour, of color, of symbolism, reveal an essence usually hidden."

"If we are to look at Rose’s career in the form of a linear timeline exhibiting important moments in the artist’ career, we see that her work is a threaded by essential fractiles through a landscape of powerful ideas, she is listening and responding to conditions."

"Without providing any definite answers, I think my work raises questions about attitudes towards race and gender. I think it operates on different levels and reflects different racial and political experiences - but I don't think my pieces are limited by that. I hope they transcend and go beyond that, and provide a space for illusion and fantasy. They reflect a desire to present myself in various ways to counter the image that has been imposed on me. Race is inevitable in South Africa."

"The self is explored as an ongoing process of construction in time and place. The presence and absence of the body in the work points to the idea that one's identity is not static, and constantly in a state of flux."

"I don’t have a ‘feminist artist statement’ as such. Being a woman is only one aspect of who I am."

"Searle pays constant attention to the social issues and movements in South Africa, such as xenophobia, access to housing, land and political protests. Her work is not reducible to simple poignant condemning. Rather, through her visual language, ripe with symbolism and narrativity, she creates the entanglement of poetic and violent imagery which captures the contradictions and complexities of South Africa."

"We were denied the experience of knowing what Nelson Mandela looked like. We were denied the experience of each other's lives." Still, "one developed ways around the system that were illicit but expressive . . . we all learned, as it were, to wiggle and squiggle."

"As much as Pinky Pinky is a perpetrator of violence, it also seems a victim of, and scapegoat for, violent, uncivil actions – a constructed 'something' to blame for social problems."

"I believe that encounters with lively matter can chasten my fantasies of human mastery, highlight the common materiality of all that is, expose a wider distribution of agency and reshape the self and its interests"

""I was always interested in objects as carriers of meanings beyond themselves, they are physical traces of time, of people's lives and social histories, like an archive, which I use similarly to how I use film...its an ephemeral art really. The objects get taken down and become like paint tubes again"."

""The constant evolution of the installations and the meanings made from them functions as a generative force in Siopis's work. One thing nestled next to another or dropped over another, creating countless relationships. They're endless these bits of relationships between things and objects and spaces"."

"The material process of the paintings is a fluid affair; the glue’s capacity to change its form and colour when it comes into contact with other forces – air, gravity, water, my gestures – imbues it with a presence that holds onto itself as ‘something other’, yet can simultaneously take on the guise of an image."

"With global warming, what do we imagine? Burning? Drowning? Absolute alterity? And what forms – or formlessnesses – do we imagine this through?"

""Penny Siopis is one of the few artists in the world today who can weave a material web of marks, gestures, voices, words, found things and painted surfaces to entangle the brute forces of history with the delicate threads of human vulnerability"."

"From the outset, her attitude to painting has been simultaneously modernist and counter-modernist in its complex irreverence to the purity of both creative act and the physical medium."

"Many of these prosthetics are "traditionally" flesh colour, a kind of dirty pink. There is irony here, as flesh colour is not just a category of colour, but nothing less than a western conceit in which whiteness (pink) becomes the universal colour for flesh"

""Sopis's Will is the ultimate time piece...We are able to glance back on a life-in-formation and recognize the subject as discursively produced, 'as project, something to be built"

"Well you know, sometimes I get so irritated with audiences, especially male audiences who will say stupid things like “that’s a nice ass” or something like that. For me, I think as long as the performer knows exactly what the intention is with the body everybody will get over everything else. There are some people who just don’t get it, and that’s ok too. I know what my body is loaded with. I know what it is and I know how to use it. I know I’ve gotten to the point where I know how it works. I don’t necessarily care anymore."

"You are born here, and yet you can’t speak one vernacular language is an issue for me. You’ve had the chance, I mean you are surrounded by people, are you telling me that as a white person you are honestly not going to make that effort. I know how to speak English, I wasn’t born around people who speak English, and I was born around people who speak isiXhosa, isiZulu. Yet I know how to speak seSotho, which is totally different from my own language, and you are telling me it’s difficult to speak one. So I’m just not buying it. I’m not interested. I title my work in a language that resonates with the work. It is also to exclude, because I know you can’t speak it, and I know that most of the audience coming in need a translation, which forces you to engage with the work even further. So it’s also a conscious decision – it might be a bad strategy, but at this point in time I don’t really care – I’m going to continue doing it.""

""The simplest thing, I could literally just have an exhibition by putting this bowl down. For me, that would be enough. But for some people they’ve always got to go extra, extra, extra. I don’t feel the same way."

"The first performance I did at the Theater Spektakel was basically around reparations, how we take back the land, and I used the student protests as the starting point. I started with video pieces of these different camps for Boere (Afrikaans) guys who run the camp because they think black people are going to invade and kill them all, and then I move on to the student protests, and after that I go to the land matter. It’s also about how the female black body is viewed in protests, how black women have protested certain things, and how they are kept out of protest history. If women must protest they must protest not to make a mark, you know, it’s not like you can be a part of the ANC and be there with Mandela."

"I don’t think so, I think there are really strong individuals and people will be surprised when we show individually. The thing is, they don’t give people a chance. That’s the main problem."

"If these were the works universally exalted across America’s art museums, if these were the images filling the heads of American children over generations, what would America’s conversations about race, gender and sexuality sound like today?"

"I'm in the world. Artists are in the world . . . My role is to get artists’ work out into the world, and excite people about it [while] being respectful [and] finding artists people won’t be familiar with."

"Through the themes of the body, sexuality, self-representation, motherhood, beliefs, the exhibition questions how the question of intimacy in black women reveals unspoken words and manifests their relationship to the world. It offers a reflection where the notions of memory, family, spirituality and imagination are intertwined. The creations presented - painting, pottery, photography, video, performance, embroidery etc. - celebrate the emancipatory energy of the "power of their hands"."

"Reconciliation is needed more than ever. We see Black Lives Matter demonstrations throughout the world, calling attention to inequality, racism and senseless violence. Inflammatory language on social media and even in politics serves to increase social polarisation. All too often, the world is shocked by extreme acts of violence prompted by prejudice against those of a certain religion, ethnicity, sexuality or gender identity."

""Living, Forgiving, Remembering | Museum Arnhem." www.museumarnhem.nl. Retrieved 27 March 2025."

"I have been preoccupied with 'forensic' methods of observation and perception for many years. Much of my work requires viewers to take on the persona of a kind of detective, deconstructing and unravelling clues and references that may not announce themselves outright. These clues are invested in the subject matter and iconography I employ but also live firmly in the media in which I choose to work."

"When working through ideas, I don't draw; I make collages. These can be visual, or more often they take the form of bits of conversations, observations and sampled words from pretty much anywhere. For this series, we decided to experiment with exposing photo-based images onto polymer plates, effecting a photogravure process, but combining this with a photolitho process."

"Working with films in this way was very interesting, considering that they were originally shot on film, processed and printed, and now transferred onto VHS or digitized onto DVD for home consumption. This process underwent a curious inversion in this work, as I photographed countless frames off my laptop screen as the DVD played."

"Watching films is no longer an exclusively public experience in cinemas. With the kinds of technologies available today, I am able to indulge my interests in capturing what lies beyond the between frames in films at my leisure, in my private space. These 'autopsied' images seem to give rise to other hidden, secret narratives when characters are caught in freeze-frame, or in the background, apparently unnoticed when not taking centre stage."

"The printmaking process for me is all about seriality - the ability to reproduce, copy, and repeat systematically. I like to think of it as a kind of failed forgery; failed as there really was no 'original' to begin with, just the possibility of many of the same."

"Monroe strikes me as being the quintessential symptom of modern society; displaced, alienated, capable of (and required to) taking on a range of personae without a basis in the understanding of self and agency. On another level, her story is also the iconic intersection of celebrity, causality and death, not to mention conspiracy. For someone whose identity is inextricably tied to her image and nothing more, it seemed right to recast her with a host of screen characters that more accurately reflected on her private experiences rather than her public persona."

"If I had something I always wanted something else, I’m just that sort of person."

"Shopping and clothing is part of my family’s culture. If something is wrong, you go buy a dress."

"She works in a wide variety of media in her artwork, producing sculptures, objects, prints, film, and more, which she often bases on personal experiences and self exploration."

"Her candidness regarding personal flaws and the cycles of repression and coping that accompany conservative, middle class, Afrikaans upbringing inform much of her work, calling attention to ways in which women are silenced or otherwise repressed in that space."

"It's difficult to talk about Southwood's work without talking about the artist herself because she so unashamedly bares herself, warts-and-all, to an audience. Plumbing the depths of her conservative, white, middle-class Afrikaans upbringing, Southwood unearths a nasty cycle of repression, abuse and the coping mechanisms offered her by this society where women occupy a silent and haunted interior. Southwood's candidness about her own disposition leaves a viewer trapped between doubting her sincerity and wanting to know less about a near stranger. 'Too close for comfort', her first one person show, held in 2000, presented the viewer with this dilemma in an all too attractive way."

"The images I am working with are taken from our daily media coverage of recent and almost commonplace happenings in newspapers, on TV and on radio of social and criminal acts of violence and ongoing unnecessary deaths – occurrences so frequent that they no longer raise an outcry from our public, yet they still constitute disaster in peacetime."

"The portraits are made with the deposits of carbon from candle smoke on white paper. They are exceedingly fragile and can be easily damaged, disintegrating with physical contact as the carbon soot is dislodged from the paper. She was interested in the extremely fragile nature of these human lives and of all human life, attempting to translate this fragility into portraits made from a medium as impermanent as smoke itself."

"The technique of using ash as a drawing medium developed from printmaking. Texture and tone in etching is produced when rosin dust is sprinkled onto an etching plate to create an aquatint."

"Victor made another series of large smoke drawings of farm animals on glass called "Brief Lives", which were displayed in an abandoned abattoir. The glass drawings deal with the loss of body and identity and the nature of the smoke speaks of the transience of life."

"Victor's smoke portraits explore subjects often overlooked, for example South African prisoners awaiting trial and missing children. These portraits capture individuals caught in a vulnerable moment, an idea reinforced through the impermanent nature of the medium used."

"The fragile and ephemeral process of candle smoke Victor felt was an appropriate medium for the portraits of the primates rendered fragile and impermanent by mankind."

"I became Phillippa Yaa when I found my biological father, who told me that if he had been there when I was born, the first name I'd have been given would be a day name like all Ghanaian babies, and all Thursday girls are Yaa, Yawo, or Yaya. So by changing my name I intended to inscribe a feeling of belonging and also one of pride on my African side."

"After growing up black in white South Africa, internalising so many negative 'truths' of what black people are like, I needed to reclaim my humanity and myself from the toxic dance of objectification."

"Because I wasn't told that I was adopted until I was twenty, I lacked a vocabulary to describe who I am and where I come from, so performing and writing became ways to make myself up."

""I started writing poetry when I was a child, my first published poem was when I was 11. I was brought up in a home that loved poetry and literature, especially the English language. But it was only when I was older that I realised that writing is so much more than words playing on a page."

"Writing contains the writer, their concerns, their social context and their history. My own history became a block to my creativity as I started to explore my identity as a black woman adopted by a white family in apartheid South Africa."

"I felt like the colonised and the coloniser were fighting each other inside my brain. Writing continued to be important to me but I was convinced that it was simply a therapeutic process, of no value to anyone else."

"As a mixed-race African and adoptee I feel, paradoxically, oppressed and completely free....My adult life has been largely devoted to healing this rift. The freedom of my paradoxical position, is in fact that I don't have the constraints of a traditional role and I have access to the world."

"I am an artist concerned primarily with contemporary socio-political narratives. I am interested in portraiture as co-authorship; social media as narrative; technology as self-reflection and provocation. I am Genderqueer, which is a non-binary transgender identity and my work deals with issues around the gaze, whiteness, capital, body politics, queer identities and radical love. I ask you to address me with gender neutral pronouns They, Them, Their."

"I have made images and told stories of people in a multitude of mediums, including photography and video documentary for the past 20 years. More recently I have been extending my art practice in ways that shares those experiences in ever more creative ways, through exhibitions, interventions, installations and performances with an aim to providing a lens for social justice. I have worked and collaborated with visual and performing artists, theatre-makers, filmmakers, dancers and audiences to make work that engages beyond aesthetics. The work democratises the creative process, because it helps people develop a language to articulate their conditions and provide a platform to express their imagination."

"I am really inspired by what is happening on campuses, it’s the reason I am here. People are demanding more and they are demanding what they deserve. I wouldn’t want to be an artist anywhere else"

"The thing about being queer is that you are constantly becoming It’s a very active identity because being queer is not about who you are but what you do"

"Being queer is being political, it is a political identity for me even more that a gender ultimately"

"The fact is that I am self-expressing. I make work that is about me and my place in the world. I can’t always get stuck in the thinking that some people think it’s controversial or react in ways that say it’s controversial"

"Most of my work is about understanding what violence and power do to people and how people strive to dignity. We can choose to ignore what is happening around us or we can choose to get involved, I would rather be active than inactive. My idea is to shift that white people are oppressed"

"All of these right-wing parties keep trying to prove that there is reverse racism happening and that’s a complete fairy tale. Reverse racism can only exist if you get into a time machine, go back and do to white people what white people did to black people for hundreds of years"