Susan Woolf

Susan Woolf is a South African artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans installation, printmaking and research-based art. Her work engages with themes of communication, social interaction and the lived realities of South African urban life. Woolf’s practice is deeply rooted in observation and participation, often exploring how visual and symbolic languages emerge within everyday contexts to facilitate connection across diverse communities.

A significant focus of her work has been the documentation and interpretation of South African taxi hand signs—an informal gestural language used by commuters to communicate destinations. Woolf undertook extensive research into this system, engaging with taxi drivers, commuters and associations across both urban and rural environments on 2004. Her work highlights the cultural and historical significance of these gestures, revealing them as a powerful, inclusive form of communication shaped by South Africa’s socio-political landscape.

Woolf pursued this research academically, completing a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand between 2009 and 2013. Her doctoral work combined art and anthropology, culminating in the documentation of taxi hand signs and the development of a tactile shape-language designed to make this system accessible to people who are blind. Her practice thus extends beyond visual representation into socially engaged and accessible forms of knowledge production.

Her artworks often take the form of paintings, sculptural installations and tactile systems that translate gesture into visual and material form. Through simplified, symbolic shapes and coded visual languages, Woolf explores how meaning is constructed, shared and experienced differently across communities. Her work also invites viewers to reconsider perception, particularly through projects that foreground tactile engagement and challenge sighted audiences to experience communication through touch.

Woolf has exhibited widely in South Africa and internationally, including at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, where her work was included in the Talk to Me exhibition, as well as at Museum Africa, the Wits Art Museum and the South African Jewish Museum. Her work has also been translated into educational and public formats, including publications, exhibitions and a South African Post Office commemorative stamp series.

Within the context of the Constitutional Court Art Collection, Woolf’s work contributes to ongoing dialogues around accessibility, communication and social inclusion. Her emphasis on shared languages (both visual and tactile) resonates with the Court’s commitment to dignity, equality and the recognition of diverse lived experiences, encouraging reflection on how meaning and connection are negotiated within a democratic society.

Sources

https://www.susanwoolf.co.za/c... (Accessed 21 April 2026)