EXHIBITIONS
NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART (EMST) / ATHENS
Penny Siopis. For Dear Life
What If Women Ruled the World?
National Museum of Contemporary Art presents For Dear Life, the first major museum retrospective in Europe of the work of Penny Siopis, one of the most important artistic voices of her generation, until January 12, 2025.
© Paris Tavitian | Penny Siopis. For Dear Life. A Retrospective Installation view at ΕΜΣΤ
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.
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.
The exhibition includes work from each of Siopis’ major series, including the Cake (1980–84) and History (1985–95) paintings, Will (1997–), and Pinky Pinky (2002–05), as well as a number of her celebrated experimental films, which combine found footage with personal archives and texts to produce poignant meditations on the political, personal and historical cornerstones that marked her life, as well as that of her home country, during a time of socio-political change and rights-based struggles in South Africa and beyond.
