Nationality South African Role Artist | Name Sue Williamson | |
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Born 21 January 1941 (age 83) ( 1941-01-21 ) Lichfield, England Known for installation art, photography, video art Awards Visual Arts Research Award, Smithsonian Institution (2007) Education Art Students League of New York Books South African Art Now, Resistance art in South Africa, Art in South Africa | ||
Meet Your Artist | Sue Williamson
Sue Williamson (b. 1941) is a South African artist and writer.
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Life
Sue Williamson was born in Litchfield, England in 1941. In 1948 she immigrated with her family to South Africa. Between 1963 and 1965 she studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1983 she earned her Advanced Diploma in Fine Art from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town. In 2007 she received the Visual Arts Research Award from the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C and in 2011 the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship. In 2013 she was a guest curator of the summer academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.
Museums and exhibitions
Williamson’s work engages with themes related to memory and identity formation. Trained as a printmaker, Williamson has worked across a variety of media including archival photography, video, mixed media installations, and constructed objects. Her earlier work, such as Mementos of District Six (1993), Out of the Ashes (1994), and R.I.P. Annie Silinga (1995), are a few early examples that convey her investment in the recuperation and interrogation of South African history. Her ethical lens has expanded in more recent years to consider social issues on a more global scale, as in her work Other Voices, Other Cities, from 2009.
Williamson's work is in the collection of a variety of museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of African Art - Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Williamson has also participated in group exhibitions including The Short Century (2001), Liberated Voices (1999), the Johannesburg Art Biennale (in 1997 and 1995), the Havana Biennale (1994), and the Venice Biennale (1993).
Publications
In 1997 Sue Williamson established ArtThrob, a prominent online publication that features the work of contemporary South African artists. ArtThrob has been nominated three times as a finalist for the Arts and Culture Trust Award, and in 1999 was nominated for the United Nations for best cultural website.
