Deborah Bell was born in Johannesburg in 1957. She has worked with a great variety of media during her career and has collaborated on various historically important projects with artists such as William Kentridge and Robert Hodgins. Bell received her BAFA (Hons) and MFA degrees at the University of Witwatersrand. She currently lives and works from her studio in Magaliesburg and collaborates on several projects at David Krut studios in Johannesburg.
Bell can be considered as one of South Africa’s leading contemporary artists. For Deborah, her artmaking is a spiritual practice, referring to the Buddhist preoccupation with stillness and the shedding of attachment and the ego. In her iconography she draws from a range of cultures including African, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, early Christian and European. Bell’s conceptual concerns refer to classical history, mysticism, goddesses and her place in ancient and contemporary Africa. She works intuitively and the meaning of the work will often only reveal itself to her over time. This allows the viewer to respond to the work on their own terms. Her work evokes a strong connection to archetypes that transcend language and cultural barriers. Bell (Leibbrandt2015:1) explains: “For me every single artwork is more of a spiritual discipline about inner transformation.”
In recent years she has developed an immediately recognisable visual language, her images are simple, stark and symbolic explained as being grounded, silent, still and poised. Her earlier figures, characterised by entrapment, have given away to figures embodying the seeker. These figures are often accompanied by boats, horses, and chariots. Images of lions, dogs, horses and angels often found in her work are explained as representing intermediary figures between the physical world and a higher more spiritual realm. These figures can also be interpreted as representing aspects of herself. For example: the powerful daemons that reside in all of us, which are often accompanied by solitary female figures, some full of assertive confidence, others more vulnerable and less sure of their agency. Bell is interested in the half-formed image. Her more recent work has become more concerned with surrender, focusing on the simplicity of the present. Bell stated that she works towards the Zen mark: the single gesture of absolute presence (Everard Read Gallery). Her work is in many prestigious local and international collections including MOMA (USA), The National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Hara Museum (Tokyo) and the SA National Gallery in Cape Town. Bell works in a variety of media from animations (where she collaborated with Robert Hodgins and William Kentridge), to hand-built clay sculptures, bronzes, works on paper and paintings.
Sources:
- Everard Read Gallery. 2020. [0]. Available: https://www.everard-read.co.za/artist/DEBORAH_BELL/works/Accessed 2020/08/03.
- The artist’s press. [o]. Available: https://www.artprintsa.com/deborah-bell.html/Accessed 2020/08/03.
- New Publication from TAXI Art Books and Coinciding Exhibition at Goodman Gallery by Kresta Tyler. 2004. [O]. Available: http://www.artthrob.co.za/04apr/news/taxi010.html/Accessed 2020/08/03.
- ‘I don’t know if I summoned these figures or if they summoned me’ by Tim Leibbrandt. 2015. [O]. Available: https://artthrob.co.za/2015/06/04/deborah-bell-i-dont-know-if-i-summoned-these-figures-or-if-they-summoned-me/Accessed 2020/08/03.
- A student review by Lucia L. Boshoff. 2015. [O]. Available: https://artthrob.co.za/2015/06/22/deborah-bell-immortalised/Accessed 2020/08/03.
