Wim botha artist biography

He grew up in a suburban town on the eastern side of Pretoria.
Botha was born in Pretoria in 1974.
Wim Botha (b.

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Wim Botha (b.1974) is a leading South African contemporary artist best-known for his sculptural works. He graduated with a degree in visual art from the University of Pretoria in 1996.

A defining feature of Botha’s practice is the diverse and often unconventional media he employs – from carved books, marble, bronze and wood, to oil paint and ink. Famously, in 2004, Botha created a replica of Michelangelo’s Pietà out of maize meal.

The mediums Botha uses are very much intertwined with his objective to explore history, religion, status and power through an art historical lens. Botha’s reinterpretations of baroque and renaissance figures in his unique armoury of materials sees them transformed, blurred and reconstructed, subverting their original meaning.

Botha has been recognised with a number of honours and awards including, in 2013 the Helgaard Steyn Prize for sculpture, in 2005 the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, and in 2003 he was the first recipient of the prestigious Tollman Award. In 2013 his work was included in the South African pavilion at the 55^th Venice Biennale

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Wim Botha

South African sculptor

Wim Botha (born 1974) is a South African contemporary artist.

Biography

Botha was born in Pretoria in 1974 and currently lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He grew up in a suburban town on the eastern side of Pretoria.^[1] In 1996, Botha graduated from the University of Pretoria with a Bachelors in Visual Art. He has received the Helgaard Steyn Prize for sculpture in 2013, Standard Bank Young Artist Award 2005, and the Tollman Award 2003.^[2]

Works

Botha has found inspiration for his work in government texts and religious icons, objects that show belief, faith, observation, transgression and forgiveness.^[3] Among the mediums he uses are treated wood, books, acrylic enamel paint, oil paint, steel, Indian ink, bronze, paper, and marble.^[4]

The artist explains; “My works are a process of distillations...They attempt to reduce all-encompassing ideas and universal factors down to their core idea.” Exploring along the way “intercepting variables” and “patterns”^[5]

Exhibitions ^{& •
Botha was born in Pretoria in 1974. He graduated from the University of Pretoria with a BA (Visual Art) in 1996. He lives in Cape Town.
He has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Helgaard Steyn Prize for sculpture in 2013, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 2005, and the first Tollman Award in 2003. Solo exhibitions have taken place at the 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville (2020); North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, and the 21c Museum Hotel in Durham (2019); the Norval Foundation (2018); Galerie Hans Mayer (2017); Feldbusch Wiesner Rudolph (2017, 2019, 2021); Fondation Blachère in Apt, France (2016); Galerie Jette Rudolph, Berlin (2015); the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (2014); Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria (2013), and the Sasol Art Museum, Stellenbosch, as the Stellenbosch University Wordfest Artist for 2013, in addition to exhibitions at Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg (2003 - 24).
Notable group exhibitions include Otherscapes, Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, South Africa (2023); Healing, WhiteSpaceBlackBox, Neuchâtel, Switzerlan}