b. 1941
Sue Williamson (b. 1941) was born in Lichfield, UK, and emigrated with her family to South Africa in 1948. She studied at the Art Students League of New York and the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town.
Williamson’s work centres around themes of memory and identity formation. Trained as a printmaker, Williamson also works across video, archival photography, and mixed media installations. She is well known for her series of portraits addressing social change during apartheid. Williamson states that colour, light, volume and space form the backbone of her visual language.
Her work is housed in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; the South African National Gallery, Cape Town and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. She has 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).
Williamson has been awarded the Visual Arts Research Award by the Smithsonian Institution (2007) and the Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship by the Rockerfeller Foundation (2011). In 2013 she was a guest curator of the summer academy at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern.
