Penny Siopis
PENNY SIOPIS, Verwoerd Speaks, video still, 1996
Courtesy of the artist
Penny Siopis lives in Johannesburg where she works as a professional artist and a lecturer in fine arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. She studied art at Rhodes University in Grahamstown and at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the UK. Siopis works in a range of media and while her work covers different focuses her interest in what she calls the “poetics of vulnerability” characterizes all her explorations, from her earlier engagements in history, memory and migration, to her later concerns with shame, violence and sexuality.
Siopis has exhibited widely in South Africa and internationally. International exhibitions include Art From South Africa, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1990; Incroci Del Sud Affinities: Contemporary South African Art, XLV Venice Biennale, 1993. Havana Biennials 1994, 1997; Kwangju Biennale, Korea, 1995; Earth and Everything, Arnolfini, Bristol 1996; 1st and 2nd Johannesburg Biennales, 1995, 1997; Liberated Voices: Contemporary Art from South Africa, Museum for African Art, New York, 1999; La Mémoire, Villa Medici, Rome, 1999; Africas: The Artist and the City, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, 2001; New Identities: Contemporary South African Art, Museum Bochum, 2004; Arts Unlimited, Art Basel, 2004; Migrations, Belfast Exposed, Belfast, 2006. Her most recent solo exhibitions include, Passions and Panics, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, 2005; Shame, Kappatos Gallery, Athens, 2003 and Three Essays on Shame, Freud Museum, London.