Berni Searle

Working with photography, video and film, Berni Searle’s lens based installations references ongoing explorations around history, memory and place. Born in Cape Town (1964) she completed her BA in Fine Arts (1987) and her Masters Degree (1995) at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. She currently lives and works between New York and Cape Town.

 

Solo exhibitions include Colour Me at the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet, Cape Town (1999), Colour Matters at the Kunsthalle Stadgallerie, Osnabrück, Germany (2001), A Matter of Time (MATRIX programme) at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA., USA (2003), The Space Between at the Davis Museum and Cultural Centre, Boston, Mass., USA. (2003), Float (Standard Bank Young Artist 2003 travelling exhibition) Grahamstown, Cape Town, Johannesburg (2003/4), Vapour at Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa (2004), To love, to fear, to leave, a screening at Performa05, NY, USA (2005), Berni Searle. Video works at the BildMuseet, Umeå, Sweden (2005), Presence at the Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, USA (2005), Crush at Michael Stevenson, Cape Town (2006) and survey exhibitions at USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, Florida, USA (2006) and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg (2006/07).

 

Group exhibitions since the mid-1990s include Life's Little Necessities at the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, South Africa (1997), the 7th Cairo Biennale, Egypt (1998), Afrika Portrat  at the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2000), Authentic/Ex-centric at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), Fronteras at Espacio C, Santander, Spain (2002), 2003 NMAC Montenmedio Arte Contemporaneo in Vejer de la Frontera, Spain (2003), the 5th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, China (2004), Personal Affects. Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art at theCathedral of St John the Divine and the Museum for African Art, New York, USA (2004), Hang In There, My Dear Geum-Sun, at the Busan Biennale, Busan Metropolitan Art Museum, Seoul (2004), Artes Mundi Artists exhibitionat the National Museum and Gallery, Cardiff, Wales (2004), A Kind of Magic - The Art of Transforming at the Museum of Art, Lucerne, Switzerland (2005), Always a Little Further, at the 51st Venice Biennale, Venice (2005), TEXTures: Word and Symbol in Contemporary African Art at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA (2005),  the 7th  Dakar Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2006) and 2006 Contemporary Commonwealth at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI) and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Australia (2006).

 

Awards, scholarships and residencies include an ASATT grant for a four month residency at the Canberra Institute of the Arts, Australian National University (1992), DAAD scholarships (1992 –1995), MacIver Centre for Science and Development scholarships (1992 –1995), a UNESCO award, in conjunction with the International Art Critics Association (AICA) at the 7th  International Cairo Biennale (1998), a British Council grantto undertake a residency at Gasworks, London(2000), nominee for theDaimlerChrysler Award for South African Contemporary (2000), the DAK'ART 2000 Minister of Culture Prize, Dakar Biennale (2000), FNB Vita Award Finalist (2000), Civitella Ranieri Fellow. (2001),  Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art (2003) and a shortlisted artist for the first international Artes Mundi award (2004).

 

Upcoming exhibitions include Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, New York (23 March – 1 July 2007), TRANS CAPE, Cape Town (24 March – 2 May 2007), The Eye Screen or The New Image at Casino Luxembourg- Forum for Contemporary Art (23 March- 17 June 2007), Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa 1950 – Present. Traveling exhibition. Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, USA. 2007–2009, African Art Today:  Diversity and Diaspora at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, USA. November 2007 - April 2008 and Black Womanhood: Images, Icons, and Ideologies of the African Body  curated by Barbara Thompson, at  the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, USA. (27 March 2008 –7 September 2008) traveling in the United States from Fall 2008 through Spring 2009.