Minnette VARI (b. 1968)
Quake
2007
digital installation
edition of 5
3 min
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Pretoria, Minnette Vári studied Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria, where she obtained her Master’s degree. She lives and works in Johannesburg and is known primarily for her video installations which conflate history with the self, examining how identity arises out of a traumatic past.
Since 1998 Vári has worked predominantly with digital media and large-scale video projections, often including performance elements by inserting her own body into reworked media and historical documentary footage. The female ‘protagonist’ of her video works is sometimes archetypal and sometimes spectral, a persona who ingests and is ingested by time. Vári also produces series of drawings and paintings that are thematically linked to her video projects.
She has exhibited her work since the early 1990s, participating in group exhibitions such 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 Songs of Excavation at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg (2013).
Vári’s work has been associated with exhibitions and conferences exploring themes of identity and the body, transition, politics, mythology, trauma and history.
Public Collections: Johannesburg Art Gallery; MUHKA (Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp), The Museum of Art Luzern; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Sindika Dokolo Collection of Contemporary African Art, Luanda, Angola; Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town); Standard Bank South Africa; UNISA (University of South Africa); Zürich Versicherung, Switzerland; SABC Art Collection.