Christine DIXIE (b. 1966)
Hide (To Withhold or Withdraw from Sight)
2002
lightbox installation: mezzotint, punctured holes & silkscreen
61 x 248 cm
This mezzotint, Hide, is part of a broader installation of the same name in which Dixie explores the divisions and boundaries between interior and geographic states. Hide shows five figures – portraits of the artist, her husband, infant, pet dog and… Continue Reading
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Cape Town, Christine Dixie received her BFA from the University of the Witwatersrand; followed by her MFA from the University of Cape Town in 1993.
Based in Makhanda in the Eastern Cape, where she is a senior lecturer at Rhodes University, Dixie is a multimedia artist who specialises in printmaking, and has produced numerous large-scale installations. Her work challenges the ways gender roles have been historically conditioned by society, myths and image-making. The manifestation of the colonial history that haunts the town of Makhanda in South Africa, has compelled her preoccupation with Europe’s legacy in Africa. Her practice and aesthetic rely on archival imagery and in-depth research.
Her 2009 installation work The Binding, consisting of six sculptures, six altars, six etchings, and two digital prints, was purchased in 2010 by the National Museum of African Art, the Smithsonian Institution’s African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. The museum also owns copies of her 2000 mezzotint Hide: to withhold or withdraw from sight, her 2001 work Unravel, and her 2007 work Even in the Long Descent I-V.
In 2012, she was one of 15 artists awarded an Artist Research Fellowship by the Smithsonian Institution. Her project, entitled The Heroic Explorer and Angelic Girl, focused on 19th-century gender stereotypes and used materials at the National Portrait Gallery and Museum of American History.
International group shows include Earth Matters: Earth as Material and Metaphor, curated by Dr Karen Milbourne (2007) and The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists curated by Simon Njami (2012), both of which opened at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art. Her installation To Be King was part of the Personal Structures exhibited at Palazzo Bembo in Venice (2017) and was shown at the International Festival at the Coronet Cinema in London and the Kaunas in Art Festival in Lithuania (2018) and the Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth, Germany (2022). Other exhibitions include, @ Bathurst St, Makhanda at the Gallery of the SARChi chair at the University of Johannesburg, (2022). Blueprint for the DisOrder of Things, Wits Art Museum (2022) and The Astronomer, the Princess and The Order of Things, Graham Contemporary (2022).
Her work is also in the collections of the New York Public Library, the Johannesburg Art Museum, and the Iziko South African National Gallery.