‘Of Darkness and of Light’ is a comprehensive survey of the work of Minnette Vári, for the past twenty years one of South Africa’s leading visual artists. The exhibition will feature several of her video installations, digital print series and works on paper, including some from Standard Bank’s collection.

Vári is known for intellectually and visually challenging work that reflects a nuanced consideration of cultural, gender and racial stereotypes in the South African psyche, sometimes in radical ways. Her work has straddled many media, while engaging consistently with themes of identity, trauma, mythology, history, memory and the politics of belonging. One aspect of her work that runs through all these themes is testing the interaction and collision of individual realities and identities with mythical and wider social realities, often in jarring and unexpected ways.

 The current show, as a mid-career survey, reflects both departures from type and the consistencies of concept and medium, which Vári has successfully refined for two decades. Vári remains one of our most challenging, rigorous and sophisticated artists. She is deeply committed to her craft, and to the processes of heart and mind that emerge as the work of art.

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