As Penny Siopis’ very successful exhibition For Dear Life is coming to an end (on 16 February), the EMST – as part of the EMST Portraits series of artist presentations – invites you on Thursday 6 February at 19.00 to a talk by the artist, who will then discuss her life and work with Katerina Gregou, Artistic Director of the Museum and curator of the exhibition.

At the same time, EMST is organizing three last guided tours with Katerina Gregou on February 9, 15 & 16. These guided tours aim to get closer acquaintance with the works and life of Penny Siopis, in the first major exhibition in her country of origin.

These two actions are a last unique opportunity to get in touch with a powerful voice of the Greek diaspora, the important South African artist of Greek origin Penny Siopis, to get to know in even greater depth her unparalleled artistic language, which combines feminism, activism and anti-colonial critique, and to connect with political and personal stories, both intimate and experientially shocking.

About Penny Siopis
Penny Siopis was born in 1953 in the city of Freiburg to Greek parents. She currently resides in Cape Town. She became known as early as the 1980s and 1990s for her historically and culturally charged paintings, which were critical of colonialism, apartheid, racism and sexism. Using a wealth of illustrative material, she delves into her artistic practice, the experiences that defined her and what she calls her “poetics of vulnerability”. For the past fifty years, Siopis, in complex, bold and multidimensional ways, has been capturing and redefining the interwoven stories she has lived through, in times of radical social and political change, creating a multidimensional body of work that has made her one of the most important artistic voices of her generation both within and outside the African continent, with a particular influence on the younger generation of artists, a reference point for contemporary anti-colonial and feminist art.