Diane Victor (b. 1964 in Witbank, South Africa) has established herself as a major figure in the South African and International art communities and is renowned for her expert printmaking and draughtsmanship. Victor positions herself within the South African art scene through her bold confrontations with difficult and at times taboo subject matter. Her large-scale drawings and etchings demonstrate a command of mark-making, which she uses to render her subjects in affecting detail. At times, her work seems to pose challenges to social and political life in contemporary South Africa, considering issues of corruption, violence, and an unequal power distribution.
Having received her BA Fine Arts Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, with a major in Printmaking, and graduating with distinction – Victor has gone on to win various prestige awards including the Sasol New Signatures Award in 1987. In 1988, Victor became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Volkskas Atelier Award which granted her a ten-month stay at the Cité Internationale des Artes in Paris, France. Over this period, Victor was able to work collaboratively with other experienced printmakers and to observe and reflect on a society quite different from her own.
Victor has exhibited at numerous venues around South Africa and internationally, some of which include the UNISA Gallery, Fried Contemporary, MoMA New York, Faulconer Gallery, The Highpoint Center for printmaking, The Gus Fisher Gallery, National Museum of Contemporary Art Oslo, Yale University Art Gallery, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and Australia and Adelaide Central Gallery. Victor’s work is part of several important collections, including Sasol, Pretoria Art Museum, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Durban Art Museum and Santam.
Since 1990, Victor has been a lecturer, teaching Fine Art, at various South African institutions including the University of Pretoria, Tshwane University of Technology, Open Window Academy, the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University, and the University of Johannesburg.
Victor lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. At present, she is a senior Fine Art lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s Department of Visual Art.
Sources:
- Weapons and Warfare. History and Hardware of Warfare. 2018. [O]. Available: https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2018/02/22/the-shang-chariot-in-battle-i/Accessed: 2020/12/30.
- Warren Editions. Diane Victor. 2020. [O]. Available: http://www.warreneditions.com/dianevictor/#:~:text=For%20Victor%2C%20the%20correlation%20between,kitchen%20in%20the%20Eastern%20Cape/Accessed: 2020/30.
- SA History. The Migrant Labour System. 2019. [O]. Available: https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/migrant-labour-system/Accessed: 2020/12/28.
- Taylor, I. Journal of Contemporary African Studies. The Ambiguous Commitment: The People’s Republic of China and the Anti-Apartheid Struggle in South Africa. 2010. [O]. Available: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/025890000111986?needAccess=true&journalCode=cjca20/ Accessed: 2020/12/31.
- O’ Toole, S. Art Bio a feature of an artist in the public eye. Diane Victor. 2003. [O]. Available: https://artthrob.co.za/03feb/artbio.html/Accessed: 2020/12/28.
- David Krut Projects. Showing Truth to Power. New works by Diane Victor. 2017. [O]. Available: https://artthrob.co.za/2017/10/05/diane-victor-at-david-krut/Accessed: 2020/12/28.
- Fikeni, L. Diane Victor’s ‘One Pound of Flesh’. 2016. [O]. Available: https://artthrob.co.za/2016/01/21/a-brief-study-in-white-suburban-fears-diane-victors-one-pound-of-flesh/Accessed: 2020/12/28.
- Goodman Gallery. Diane Victor. 2020. [O]. Available: https://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/diane-victor/Accessed: 2020/12/15.
