Penny Siopis

Penny Siopis (b. 1953) is a South African artist known for her multidisciplinary approach. Based in Cape Town, Siopis creates work across painting, film/video, photography, and installation. Her earlier pieces explored and critiqued still life and history painting genres. By situating her art within a post-colonial framework, she investigates the intricate overlap between collective and personal histories, as well as the ways memory is constructed. An early engagement with feminist aesthetics profoundly influenced her subsequent focus on themes such as violence, shame, sexuality, and most recently, grief. Throughout all her mediums—be it painting, found object installation, or film—Siopis uses materiality intentionally, drawing attention to both the physical qualities of her materials and her own embodied creative process.

Penny Siopis (b. 1953) is a multidisciplinary South African artist and honorary professor who currently lives and works out of Cape Town. Siopis works in painting, film/video, photography, and installation. In the past, her work critically engaged the genres of still life and history painting. Locating her practice within a post-colonial context, the artist continues to reflect on the complex intersections of collective and individual history and the construction of memory. Her early interest in the feminist aesthetics has shaped her later explorations of violence, shame, sexuality and, more recently, grief. Conscious use of materiality as a signifier- both throughout her media and in the embodied awareness of her own process – characterizes all Siopis’s work, whether in painting, found object installations or film. She studied BA Fine Arts at Rhodes University, where she also got her MA Fine Arts in 1976. She studied a post-graduate course in painting at Portsmouth Polytechnic, England, before taking up a lecturing position at the Natal Technikon in Durban. In 1984 she moved to Johannesburg and began lecturing in the Department of Fine Arts, University of the Witwatersrand in 1995. She held the position of Associate Professor in Fine Arts at Wits until 2010, when she moved to Cape Town to work as a full-time artist. In 2017, Rhodes University awarded her an Honorary Doctorate. She is currently an Honorary Professor at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She also has research and teaching associations with the University at Leeds, UK, and Umeå University in Sweden. Penny Siopis has exhibited extensively both locally and abroad. In 2002 Siopis had an exhibition in Johannesburg entitled Pinky – Pinky and other Xeni. Subsequent to this show, Siopis worked on the Shame series and Siestog prints together with David Krut Workshop (DKW), relating to that previous body of work. It was subsequently shown at David Krut Projects (DKP) in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Siopis has also been featured at various group exhibitions at DKP.