- Diane Victor
-
Diane Victor, renowned artist and printmaker who has established herself as a major figure in South Africa and internationally, was born in Witbank, South Africa. Known for her highly satirical and visceral social commentary of contemporary South African politics, Victor embraces taboo and controversy in her prints and drawings to depict transition in South Africa after apartheid and the lingering racial divide, corruption, and gender inequity that continue to haunt the political environment.
Victor received her BA Fine Arts Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, in 1986. In addition to graduating with distinction and winning various awards, Victor also became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Volkskas Atelier Award in 1988.
From 1990 to the present, Victor is a part-time lecturer, teaching drawing and printmaking, at various South African institutions including the University of Pretoria, Wits Technikon, Pretoria Technikon, Open Window Academy, Vaal Triangle Technikon, the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg.
Contents
Recent Work
Victor's work utilizes the figure, often her own self-portrait, to create complex narratives relating to contemporary South Africa and to the more global crisis of war, corruption and violence in both the public, political sphere and in private, personal relationships. According to Virginia Mackenny, Victor’s work challenges the viewer "to scour her heavily packed images, densely rich in individual detail, to discover their levels of irony and action. Singularly devoid of any classicising hope of order, these images recall Breugal or Bosch in their pessimistic view of the world and the heaping of one folly on top of another".[1] While Victor does not hesitate to depict reality fraught with injustice, she beautifully reveals the complexity of contemporary existence with all its contradictions and corruptions. "Victor's ability to present her themes and subjects in a manner that all but forces our identification with them ejects us out of our complacent stupors, whether we wish it or not."[2]
In her portfolio of prints, Birth of a Nation (2009), Victor explores the history of colonial engagement in Africa along with the contemporary context of corruption and imperialism under the guise of progressive economic globalism. Published by David Krut Projects, "This series of ten etchings appropriates classical myths and re-contextualizes these Western narratives with African and South African themes and landscapes. For instance, in Romulus and Remus a hyena replaces the she-wolf from which the infamous founders of Rome suckle. In The Rape of Africa, Victor, alluding to the story of the abduction of Europa, replaces the white bull (Zeus) with a rhinoceros being controlled by a defiant huntress, thus morphing the story to address the ravaging of Africa’s natural resources."[3] Evoking the visual dexterity of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and the political satire of Francisco de Goya, Victor utilizes historical and mythological references as a platform to insert South African narratives, fusing a recognizable storyline with new characters and adapting allegory to include a South African subject.
In Disasters of Peace, Victor directly references Francisco de Goya's Disasters of War. In this series, Victor evokes Goya's criticism of the atrocities of war while demonstrating the continuation of violence after war, and in the case of South Africa, after the end of apartheid. Highlighting overlooked and everyday violence, this series draws attention to this contemporary desensitized gaze or tolerance of violence. To Victor: "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." [4]
Smoke Drawings
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[5]. Victor utilizes drawing media to capture both the subject’s portrait and vulnerable condition that is somehow in-between presence and absence. Victor is attracted to the direct correlation between the fragility of human life and the susceptibility of the physical image. For Victor, "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. I 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"'[6]
Solo Exhibitions
- 2011 Fables and Folly: Diane Victor, Recent Work at the Faulconer Gallery at Grinnell College
- 2010 Smoke Screen: Frailty and Failing at David Krut Projects in New York, NY
- 2010 Transcend at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg
- 2009 Aardklop Festival artist exhibition in Potchefstroom
- 2005 Smoke Drawings at Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town
- 2003 Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg
- 1997 Civic Theatre commission, Tesson Theatre, Johannesburg
- 1994 Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg
- 1990 South African Arts Association, Pretoria Gallery on the Market, Johannesburg
Publications
- Rankin, Elizabeth and Karen von Veh. "TAXI-013: Diane Victor." Parkwood: 2008, David Krut Publishing Taxi Art Book.
- Perryer, Sophie,ed. 10 years 100 Artists: Art in a Democratic South Africa, 2004.
Select Awards
- 2005 Gold Medal Award for Visual Art, South African Academy of Arts and Sciences
- 1999 Vermont Study Center Residency, Vermont
- 1998 UNESCO Residency, Vienna, Austria
- 1997 Ampersand Foundation Fellowship, New York
- 1988 Winner of the Volkskas L'Atelier Award
Select Reviews
- Herlo van Rensburg, "An interview with Diane Victor." Image and Text. No.5, p. 27-31, August 1995
- Herlo van Rensburg, "Purging in the work of Diane Victor: Contradiction and Convergence", June 1996 www.up.ac.za/academic/arts/gallery.html,
- Chris Roper, "Each to his/her own", Mail & Guardian, May 8, 1998
- Brenda Atkinson, "Some gems at the end of the rainbow", Mail & Guardian,April 8, 1999 (Review of Winsor and Newton Millennium Painting Competition)
www.chico.mweb.co.za/mg/art/fineart/9904/990408-winton.html
- Brenda Atkinson, "Clean: An Exhibition of De-saturated Contemporary Art", ArtThrob, November 2001
www.artthrob.co.za/01nov/reviews/millennium.html
- Daniel Thöle, "Social statements cross boundaries", Business Day, Tuesday, April 9, 2002 (Review of 'Transmigrations' at Pretoria Art Museum)
www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/6702/transmigration/reviews/bdreview.htm
- Sue Williamson, "Grime' at Bell-Roberts Art Gallery", ArtThrob, July, 2002
www.artthrob.co.za/02jul/reviews/grime.html
- Andrea Jonker-Bryce, "More than meets the eye", Dispatch Online, Thursday, November 21, 2002 (Review of 'Transmigrations' at Ann Bryant Art Gallery)
www.dispatch.co.za/2002/11/21/features/EYE.HTM
References
- ^ Perryer, Sophie,ed. 10 years 100 Artists: Art in a Democratic South Africa, 2004, p. 398.
- ^ McInnes, Jacki. "Of Fables and Folly: Diane Victor, Recent Work Catalog."Grinnell: Faulconer Gallery, 2011
- ^ http://www.davidkrutpublishing.com/artbase/abf-artist.php?artist=115
- ^ http://www.art.co.za/dianevictor/groupb.htm
- ^ http://www.davidkrutpublishing.com/artbase/abf-artist.php?artist=115
- ^ http://www.michaelstevenson.com/contemporary/exhibitions/victor/smoke.htm
External links
Categories:- South African artists
- Living people
- University of Pretoria faculty
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