Notes

Minnette Vári was born in 1968 in Pretoria, where she studied fine arts at the University of Pretoria, obtaining her master’s degree in 1997.
She is known primarily for her video installations. Focusing in turn on mass media and ancient lore, Vári has explored different systems by which humans have explained the world to themselves. She has pursued the ways in which such knowledge is vigorously transformed through time, showing a constant interplay between the ancient and fantastical and the hypermodern and technological.
Weaving real and imagined etymologies and cartographies into singularly complex and circular narratives, Vári’s work continuously redefines the boundaries of the personal, creating new meanings in the ever-narrowing gap between private and collective worlds, and mapping the uncertain realms of the sacrosanct and the profane.