Artist Database

Diane Victor's work is renowned for its biting critique of contemporary society, corruption, and the legacies of colonialism and apartheid. Her exceptional draughtsmanship and technical innovation in drawing and printmaking make her work instantly recognisable. She has taught drawing and printmaking at various South African institutions and has exhibited widely. In 1988, Victor, then a recent BA Fine Arts graduate from Wits, became the youngest recipient of the Volkskas Atelier Award (now the ABSA L'Atelier Award). In 2009, she originated and editioned a series of drypoints at the David Krut Workshop, called Birth of a Nation. She exhibited these works along with a series of smoke drawing portraits at David Krut Projects, New York, in 2010, returning to the US in January 2011 to show at Grinnell College in Iowa. Victor was the subject of TAXI-013 (a publication in the David Krut Publishing TAXI Art Book series) as well as Burning the Candle at Both Ends, a monograph published to coincide with Victor's two-part exhibition, Ashes to Ashes and Smoke to Dust, at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery. Victor's works are included in many collections locally and internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art - both in New York, the New York Public Library, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.