Minnette Vári

Minnette Vári
Born Minnette Vári
Pretoria, South Africa, 1968
Nationality South African
Education University of Pretoria
Known for Video art, Installation art, Painting, Drawing, Digital art
Notable work Alien, Oracle, REM, Chimera, Quake, Vigil, Rebus, Totem, The Revenant, Out of Time.

Minnette Vári (born 1968) is a prominent South African artist known primarily for her video installations.

Born in Pretoria, Vári studied fine arts at the University of Pretoria where she obtained her masters degree. She lives and works in Johannesburg.

Work

As Kendell Geers observes in a catalogue essay published in 2004 by the Lucerne Art Museum, “Minnette Vári has in her lifetime witnessed the fall of apartheid and all its structures, followed by the new democracy.” In response to this history, Vári has written a history of herself in relation to this trajectory, one that attempts to recover what is lost, to give shape and voice to forgotten or erased memories. Her work conflates self and history,examining how identity arises out of the traumatic past. In her videos and drawings, Vári frequently depicts her own body enduring a disfiguring metamorphosis – she merges with and emerges from nature as well as from the concrete architecture of modern cities. The female “protagonist” of her video works is sometimes archetypal and sometimes spectral, a persona who ingests and is ingested by time.

Vári works in diverse media, from ink drawing to video installations, often incorporating performance elements into reworked media and historical documentary footage. Her work has been thematically linked to exhibitions and conferences exploring themes of identity, mythology, transition, politics, trauma and history. Publications featuring her work include Art Cities of the Future, 21st Century Avant-Gardes (Phaidon 2013), Sue Williamsonʼs South African Art Now (Harper Collins 2009) and 10 years 100 Artists, Art in a Democratic South Africa, Sophie Perryer (ED) (Bell-Roberts 2004).

Vári has exhibited her work since the early nineties, participating in such group exhibitions as the Second Johannesburg Biennale (1997), the Venice Biennale (2001 and 2007), and the 10th Biennale of Havana (2009). Her solo exhibitions include a monographic solo exhibition at the Art Museum Lucerne, Switzerland (2004), Vigil at Elga Wimmer Gallery, New York (2007), Chimera at Basel Art Unlimited (2003) and most recently, Songs of Excavation at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg (2013). She will present a mid-career retrospective at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg in early 2016.

Selected Publications

2016 Murinik, T. (Ed) Of Darkness and of Light (Monograph). Standard Bank of South Africa Limited, Johannesburg. Texts by Simon Njami, Pamela Allara, Tracy Murinik, Fabiana Lopes, John M. Peffer, James Sey.

2013 Art Cities of the Future: 21st Century Avant-Gardes. Phaidon, London.

2009 Williamson, S. South African Art Now. Harper-Collins, New York.

2005 Bilbija, K., Fair, J-E., Milton, C. E. and Payne, L. A. (Ed). The Art of Truth-Telling about Authoritarian Rule. The University of Wisconsin Press, Wisconsin USA.

2004 Perryer, S. (Ed) et al. 10 Years, 100 Artists: Art in a Democractic South Africa. Bell-Roberts Publishing in association with Struik Publishers, Cape Town, South Africa.

Bedford, E. (Ed) A Decade of Democracy: South African Art 1994-2004. Iziko Museums of Cape Town and Double Storey (Juta), Cape Town.

Neubauer, S. (Ed) Minnette Vári (Monograph). Lucerne Museum of Art, Switzerland. Texts by Harald Szeemann, Kendell Geers, John M. Peffer, Liese van der Watt, Susanne Neubauer.

2002 Powell, R. J. Black Art: A Cultural History. Thames & Hudson Publishers, London, UK.

2002 Barragán, P. El Arte Que Viene / The Art To Come. Subastas Siglo XXI, Madrid, Spain

1999 Atkinson, B. and Breitz, C. (Ed). Grey Areas: Representation, Identity and Politics in Contemporary South African Art. Chalkham Hill Press, Johannesburg, South Africa.

1996 Williamson, S. and Jamal, A. Art In South Africa, The Future Present. David Philip Publishers, Cape Town, South Africa.

Public Collections

Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town)

JAG (Johannesburg Art Gallery)

Lucerne Art Museum

MUHKA (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp)

Sindika Dokolo Collection of Contemporary African Art Luanda, Angola

Standard Bank South Africa

UNISA (University of South Africa)

Zürich Versicherung, Switzerland

See also

References

Perryer, Sophie (2004). 10 Years 100 Artists: Art In A Democratic South Africa. Cape Town: Struik. ISBN 1868729877. 

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