Artist Database

Berni Searle was born in Cape Town in 1964, where she currently lives and works. She received her Master’s in Fine Arts in 1995 from the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. Working in photography, video, and film, Searle frequently uses her own image in her works. She is known to explore issues of self-representation, identity, history, memory, and place often in reference to apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa.

Searle’s work has been included in exhibitions throughout South Africa, the United States of America, and Europe such as The Walter Collection, Ulm, Germany (2015); The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, USA (2013); The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, NY, USA (2011 and 2007); The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK (2011); and the Venice Biennale (2001 and 2005). In 2003, she received the Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art award. Searle was the 2014 Rockefeller Bellagio Creative Arts Fellow and the 2019 artist in residence at the Maitland Institute in Cape Town.