Wim Botha is a contemporary artist working mainly in the mediums of sculpture and installation. He was born in Pretoria in 1974 and grew up in a suburban town on the eastern side of Pretoria. In 1996 he graduated from the University of Pretoria with a BA (Visual Art) in 1996. Currently he lives in Cape Town and is represented by the Stevenson Gallery, South Africa where he has in 2016 his seventh solo exhibition.
Botha throughout his career has received several prestigious awards, including the Helgaard Steyn Prize for sculpture in 2013, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2005, and the first Tollman Award in 2003. Recent solo exhibitions have taken place atGalerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin in 2015, the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (2014); Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013), and the Sasol Art Museum, Stellenbosch, as the Stellenbosch University Wordfest Artist for 2013.
He has exhibited globally and notable group exhibitions include The Divine Comedy: Heaven, purgatory and hell revisited by contemporary African artists at the MMK (Museum für Moderne Kunst), Frankfurt, Germany, travelling to other venues (2014-5); Lichtspiele at Museum Biedermann, Donaueschingen, Germany (2014); Imaginary Fact: South African Art and the Archive, the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); The Rainbow Nation, Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague (2012); the Göteborg Biennial, Sweden (2011); Memories of the Future: The Olbricht Collection, La Maison Rouge, Paris (2011); the 11th Triennale für Kleinplastik, Fellbach, Germany (2010); PEEKABOO: Current South Africa, Tennis Palace Art Museum, Helsinki (2010); Olvida Quien Soy – Erase me from who I am, Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2006); the seventh edition of Dak’Art, the Dakar Biennale (2006); and the touring exhibition Africa Remix (2004-2007).
Wim Botha is most known for busts which he creates out of carved books and encyclopaedias, however it is much more complex and developed than merely objects. The work he creates is deconstructed figurative monuments and figures juxtaposed with light, movement, and installation. The works are often dark and in states of battle or conflict, to be brief.
Sources:
- Art/Basil. Untitled (Witness 36). Wim Botha. 2015. [O]. Available: https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artwork/28107/Wim-Botha-Untitled-Witness-36/Accessed: 2021/05/18.
- South African History Online. Wim Botha. 2019. [O]. Available: https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/wim-botha/Accessed: 2021/05/18.
- Wim Botha: Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art. 2015. Wim Botha. Cape Town: Hans Retroprint.
- Stevenson Gallery. 2012. Wim Botha Busts. Cape Town: Hansa Print.
