Artist Database

Penny Siopis is a multidisciplinary artist and an honorary professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Her diverse practice of painting, film and installation covers body politics, migration, history and memory, grief and shame, climate change, and the relations between the human and non-human, with all her explorations characterised by her interest in what she calls the ‘poetics of vulnerability'.

Siopis has had numerous solo, group, and biennale exhibitions throughout her illustrious career, most notably This is a True Story: Six Films (1997–2017), a retrospective of Siopis’ film works at Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, Cape Town (2018); Time and Again: A Retrospective Exhibition, South African National Gallery, Cape Town (2014), and Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg (2015); Red: The iconography of colour in the work of Penny Siopis, KZNSA Gallery, Durban (2009), and Three Essays on Shame, Freud Museum, London (2005). Siopis’ work is represented in all major collections in South Africa as well as Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Image Jo Voysey.