The National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens (EMST) presents the first major museum retrospective in Europe of the work of Penny Siopis, one of the most important artistic voices of her generation (photo by Mario Todeschini). The exhibition For Dear Life. A Retrospective, curated by the institution’s director, Katerina Gregos, is the flagship event of What If Women Ruled the World?, a year-long cycle of exhibitions centered on women artists and artists who identify as female. The exhibition has been extended until 16.2.2025.
Born in South Africa in 1953 to Greek parents, Siopis came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s with her historically and culturally charged paintings that exercised a fierce critique against colonialism, apartheid, racism and sexism. She went on to experiment with other media such as installation and film, creating a rich, incisive and poignant body of work that has consistently engaged with the persistence and fragility of memory, notions of truth and accountability, the rights of women and the disenfranchised, the issue of vulnerability, and the complex entanglements of personal and collective histories. For 50 years Siopis has explored the politics of the body, grief and shame as they play out in her home country, South Africa. In the process she has established herself as one of the most important artistic voices of her generation on the African continent and beyond.
Penny Siopis has an MFA and an Honorary Doctorate from Rhodes University, and is an Honorary Professor at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She has presented numerous institutional solo exhibitions and has participated in major group exhibitions. Siopis is the recipient of many awards. Her work is in the collections of major art Institutions worldwide.
The exhibition at EMST features work from each of Siopis’ major series, including the Cake (1980–1984), History paintings (1985–1995), Will (1997–), and Pinky Pinky (2002–2005), as well as a number of her celebrated experimental films.
Penny Siopis, Charmed Lives, 1998-99, Installation of found objects, 3 panels, 200x150x50 cm, Collection of the artist, Photo by Paris Tavitian, EMST. Inspired by having to pack away her mother’s personal belongings after she became critically ill, Siopis became aware of how objects can and do come to ‘stand in’ for a human life; what should be kept, for sentiment or posterity, and what is disposable? As she says, it is the “raw intimate archive gone public”. (Source: Artthrob – Contemporary Art in South Africa)
Frieze magazine reported that the excellent retrospective dedicated to Penny Siopis, left a number of visitors wondering why they were unfamiliar with her work despite the fact she was born to Greek parents and many of her contemporaries, including William Kentridge, are household names in Europe (In Athens, Female Artists Have Taken Over the National Museum of Contemporary Art).
Furthermore, Frieze magazine has included the exhibition in the top ten list of shows in Europe in 2024. According to Chloe Stead, associate editor of Frieze, “Writing about the all-woman takeover of EMST earlier this year, I was shocked that I hadn’t previously been aware of the work of Penny Siopis, a South African artist who has been critiquing colonialism, apartheid, racism and sexism for more than four decades … I hope this show – the artist’s first major European solo – will result in more institutional attention for Siopis in the Northern hemisphere” (The Top Ten Shows in Europe in 2024).
Penny Siopis, Patience on a Monument: ‘A History Painting’, 1988, Oil and collage on board, 180×200 cm, William Humphreys Art Gallery, South Africa (left), Restless Republic: Groundswell, 2017, Newspaper cuttings, glue, ink and found object on canvas, 300×200 cm, Collection of the artist (right). Penny Siopis produced what is probably her most emblematic body of work, the History Paintings (1985-1995), during one of the most transformative decades in late twentieth century South African history: the fall of apartheid, the establishment of a democratic state, and the run-up to the national Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These paintings, which make reference to and subvert the grand tradition of European history painting of the eighteenth century, present colonialism on its last legs, as a visually gluttonous, excessive and decadent ‘feast’ as well as highlighting the trauma inflicted on black people collectively and individually. (Source: EMST). In Patience on a Monument: ‘A History Painting’, a black woman sits on a pile of western cultural debris. Her position and the classical drapery revealing her breast allude to heroic imagery European history painting epitomised in Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People.’ At the same time her posture and the act of peeling a lemon are anti-heroic. The landscape around her is constructed from collaged illustrations torn and photocopied from old history text books presenting the colonial point of view on South Africa’s past. (Source: EMST)
Penny Siopis, Obscure White Messenger, 2010, Single-channel digital video, 15’ 7″ (left), She Breathes Water, 2019, Single-channel digital video, 5’ 12″ (right) © Penny Siopis, Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Siopis’ experimental films combine found footage with personal archives and texts to produce poignant meditations on the political, personal and historical cornerstones that marked her life, and that of her home country also, during a time of socio-political change and rights-based struggles in South Africa and beyond (Source: EMST).
Penny Siopis, Will, 1999-, 95 objects, texts by the artist, Variable dimensions, Collection of the artist, Photo by Paris Tavitian, EMST. Will (1999- ) is a monumental, autobiographical conceptual work-in-progress which will only be completed on the artist’s death. As part of this work, Siopis bequeaths a diverse collection of objects to beneficiaries of her choice: friends, family, collaborators from all over the globe. Will is an installation that includes over 700 objects that provide insight into the artist’s collecting habits and interests – artistic and vernacular – but also into her own personal history and experience, rooted in its own particular time, place and circumstance. (Source: EMST).
Penny Siopis, Shame, 2021 (detail), Installation, 182 paintings, Mirror paint, oil, enamel, glue, watercolour, paper varnish and found objects on paper, 18,5×24,5 each, Collection of the artist. Siopis’ Shame series was born because of the shame that was felt during South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the wake of apartheid. ‘When shamed, we lose our dignity and integrity in full view of others’, writes Siiopis. […] As much as shame is pain, it also offers the grounds for empathy, encouraging us to recognise shame in others and empathise with situations not immediately our own’. (Source: EMST catalogue of the exhibition)
Penny Siopis, Cake paintings, 1982,Installation view at EMST, Photo by Paris Tavitian. Siopis first garnered attention for her Cake paintings (1980–84), rooted in her early experiences in the family bakery in Vryburg. These feed on cakes as symbols of celebration and commemoration, but also on their ephemerality: elaborate confections are destined to grow stale or be devoured, suggesting the intimate horror of aging and decay. (Source: EMST catalogue of the exhibition)
Penny Siopis, Pinky Pinky, 2002-2004, Installation view at EMST, Photo by Paris Tavitian. Pinky Pinky is an urban legend in South Africa that speaks to the uncanny cultural and sexual tangle of female adolescence: a half-human, half-animal creature that prowls on prepubescent girls in restrooms. Here, the artist plays with the limits of form at its most visceral, “dragging it to the verge of formlessnes”, as she notes. (Source: EMST catalogue of the exhibition)
Penny Siopis, History Lesson, 1990, Pages torn from South African history textbooks, photographs, 127,5×96 cm, private collection, Installation view at EMST, Photo by Paris Tavitian. Pages from apartheid-era South African history textbooks are combined with a pictogram shaped by identical photographs of the artist as a child performing in a school concert. She appears to dance on the white male history that frames her. (Source: EMST catalogue of the exhibition)
Penny Siopis, Wringing Hands, 2002, oil and acrylic on canvas (left), Stranger, 2008, Glue and ink on paper, 36×43,5 cm, Private collection (centre), Atlas, 2020-, Glue, ink and oil on paper, Installation of 84 paintings, Dimensions variable, Collection of the artist (right), Installation view at EMST, Photo by Paris Tavitian.
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TAGS: ARTS | CONTEMPORARY | DIASPORA | EMST
