Notes

The artist was the 1988 winner of Absa l’Atelier Art Competition, stayed at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris.

‘Diane Victor’s renown is based as much on her idiosyncratic iconography as on her technical excellence in drawing and printmaking. Her images in both media are figurative, narrative and obsessive, referring both to contemporary events and historical prototypes in order to expose moral, political and social excesses. Her work is densely intertextual, interweaving signs and symbols that reach back into art history but also reverberate throughout Victor’s own oeuvre. This makes analysis a complex procedure since Victor’s images are replete with meaning and reference. Drawing as a medium has ample room for this obsession as it is more forgiving and flexible than printmaking, allowing for changes and additions during the working process, whereas printmaking has less room for mistakes, especially when constrained by the shaped plates that Victor has incorporated into her prints.’¹

1. Karen von Veh (2008) Gothic Visions: Violence, Religion and Catharsis in Diane Victor’s Drawings, in Elizabeth Rankin and Karen von Veh (2008) Diane Victor, Taxi Art Project, David Krut, Johannesburg, page 50.