Diane Victor

In the striking ‘4 Horses’, a set of four etchings with additional digital printing, Victor throws the viewer off balance with the sheer force of the imagery as she fuses herself crouched into or on to the body of a horse. Three of the four horses carry a human figure within like a foetus. The fourth horse, carries a diminutive female figure strapped to its back.

The technique of using ash as a drawing medium developed from printmaking. Texture and tone in etching is produced when rosin dust is sprinkled onto an etching plate to create an aquatint. Victor realised that a similar textural effect could be created on a drawing by sprinkling ash. Victor has exhibited her large scale ash drawings on numerous occasions, notably at the exhibition ‘FUIR’ at the Fondation Blachère in France, 2017 and at 1:54, Somerset House in London, 2019.

In her portfolio of dry point prints, Birth of a Nation (2009), published by David Krut Projects, Victor explores the history of colonial engagement in Africa in the context of contemporary corruption and imperialism. She uses historical and mythological references as a platform to insert South African narratives, fusing a recognisable storyline with new characters and South African subjects.

In the ongoing series of etchings, started in 2001, Disasters of Peace, Victor directly references Francisco de Goya’s Disasters of War. In this series, Victor evokes Goya’s criticism of the atrocities of war while demonstrating the continuation of violence after war, and in the case of South Africa, after the end of apartheid. Highlighting overlooked and everyday violence, this series draws attention to this contemporary desensitised gaze or tolerance of violence. To Victor: “The images I am working with are taken from our daily media coverage of recent and almost commonplace happenings in newspapers, on TV and on radio of social and criminal acts of violence and ongoing unnecessary deaths – occurrences so frequent that they no longer raise an outcry from our public, yet they still constitute disaster in peacetime.”. To date (2020) this series consists of forty five etchings, each depicting a different disaster.

From 1990 to the present, Victor has lectured part-time, teaching drawing and printmaking at various South African institutions including the University of Pretoria, Wits Technikon, Pretoria Technikon, Open Window Academy, Vaal Triangle Technikon, the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg.

Victor was born in Witbank, South Africa. She received her BA Fine Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg in 1986.

Diane Victor, (born 1964, Witbank, South Africa) is a South African artist and print maker, known for her satirical and social commentary of contemporary South African politics.

you may like: Karis Jagger