Notes

Joni Brenner was born in Zimbabwe. She has a BA (Fine Arts) and an MA (Fine Arts) degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. She has been practising professionally as an artist since 1996. Her work is in several public and private collections. Brenner’s primary focus is in the field of portraiture though her work has moved away from traditional notions of likeness in portraiture, and presents ‘a visual quarrel’ with the tradition.

A few years ago Brenner’s interest turned to working from the skull. Closely examining the internal structure of the head has focused her thoughts on what it is to be human and on the combined forces of the natural and the experiential or social, which makes us who we are as people. Her recent work has seen her follow a process of reverse evolution with her series of images based on a cast of the Taung fossil. She has effectively moved her investigation in portraiture and what it is to be human back by a few millennia.