Penny Siopis
| Artist Name: | Penny Siopis |
| Nationality: | South African |
| Year of birth: | 1953 |
| Year of death: | 1953 |
| Artist information: | Penny Siopis was born in 1953 in Vryburg, South Africa, and lives in Cape Town. She holds a Master in Fine Arts and Honorary Doctorate from Rhodes University. In 2024, she was appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town's Michaelis School of Fine Art. Her work since the early 1980s has included painting, film/video, photography and installation.Her interest in what she calls the "poetics of vulnerability" - embodies in the dynamic play between materiality and reference, chance and contingency, form and formlessness, personal and collective history - pervades all of her investigations, whether they are about body politics, memory, migration, or the relationships between humans and non-humans. Siopis has exhibited locally and internationally since 1975 and has won a variety of awards including the Volkskas Atelier Award and the Vita Art Now award (now ABSA L’Atelier Award) in 1986. The artist has held solo and group exhibitions across Africa and Europe. In 2024, she held her first retrospective exhibition, For Dear Life. A Retrospective, in Europe at the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens. The exhibition features work from her series, including , Cake (1980–1984) and History (1985–1995) paintings, Will (1997–), and Pinky Pinky (2002–2005), as well as a number of her celebrated experimental films, which combine found footage with personal archives and texts to produce poignant meditations on the political, personal and historical cornerstones that marked her life, her home country during a time of socio-political change and rights-based struggles. Siopis is represented by Stevenson Gallery in South Africa. Sources: https://www.stevenson.info/artist/penny-siopis/biography [Accessed 22 August 2024] https://www.artprintsa.com/penny-siopis.html [Accessed 22 August 2024] https://www.aspireart.net/auction/lot/44-penny-siopis-south-africa-1953-/?lot=14217&sd=1 [Accessed 22 August 2024] https://www.emst.gr/en/exhibitions-en/penny-siopis-for-dear-life-a-retrospective [Accessed 22 August 2024] |
