Johannesburg-based artist Minnette Vári (born 1968) is known for work that examines the discomforts and desires at the heart of personal, political and historical narratives, and offers a panoptical view where the mythologies and world views of disparate cultures are brought into discordant proximity. Focusing in turn on mass media and ancient lore, Vári has explored different systems by which humans have explained the world to themselves. She has pursued the ways in which such knowledge is vigorously transformed through time, showing a constant interplay between the ancient and fantastical and the hypermodern and technological.  

Weaving real and imagined etymologies and cartographies into singularly complex and circular narratives, Vári’s work continuously redefines the boundaries of the personal, creating new meanings in the ever-narrowing gap between private and collective worlds, and mapping the uncertain realms of the sacrosanct and the profane.  

Minnette Vári obtained a Masters of Fine Art from the University of Pretoria in 1997. Since 1998 she has worked predominantly with digital media and large-scale video projections, often including performance elements by inserting her own body into reworked media and historical documentary footage. In addition, Vári regularly produces series of drawings and paintings that are thematically linked to her video projects. In her work, she has developed a distinctive visual and aural language, characterized by a palimpsest-like layering of found and invented material. Her work has been associated with exhibitions and conferences exploring themes of identity and the body, transition, politics, mythology, trauma and history.  

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Vári’s last solo exhibition in Cape Town, hosted by Goodman Gallery Cape in 2008, included two new video works and new works on paper. In The Falls, a digital print series, the colonial landscapes of Thomas Baines are incorporated into a disconcerting synthesis of cartography and mythological portraiture. 

The large, double-screen video installation, entitled Rebus, presents a dynamic visual and aural exploration of the phenomenon of renaissance. Drawing on Albrecht Dürer’s 1514 engraving Melencolia, the artist investigates how rebirth figures as an integral aspect of cultural, scientific, spiritual and even political histories, reflecting on how meanings are constructed through times of profound transition. 

Fulcrum is a single-screen video work that presents a great self-perambulatory force, potentially productive but livid with menace, tearing through undiscovered landscapes. It could be seen as a vast apparatus or even an entire city, which has rolled up all of its constituent parts into a giant centrifugal disk that goes on an exploratory rampage. Simultaneously, within its ever-shifting bounds, Fulcrum is like a womb, spinning ideas – ancient and new – into incalculably evolving possibilities.  

Vári has had a solo museum exhibition in Lucerne, Switzerland (2004), participated in several international group shows, made a second appearance on the Venice Biennale (2007) and is one of only two South Africans included in the 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale in 2008.  

Also in 2008, Minnette Vári was one of five South African artists (along with Marlene Dumas, Kendell Geers, Berni Searle and Sue Williamson) invited to curate an exhibition of young South African artists. Conceived by curator Lorenzo Fusi, the exhibition was hosted by the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, Italy from February to May 2008. Artists included Bridget Baker, Zander Blom, Ismail Farouk, Frances Goodman, Moshekwa Langa, Mikhael Subotzky, Johan Thom, Nontsikelelo Veleko and James Webb.  

Minnette Vári is represented by Goodman Gallery. Her works may be found in MUKHA (Museum van Heedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp) Belgium; The Museum of Art, Luzern, Switzerland; Rand Merchant Bank, London; Sindika Dokolo African Collection of Contemporary Art, Luanda, Angola; Iziko South African National Gallery and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, amongst others.