Penny Siopis is among the most celebrated and widely exhibited South African artists of her generation. Her practice spans painting, film, and installation, consistently engaging with histories of race, colonialism, violence, and ecological catastrophe. Her densely built, accumulative paintings — layered with food, detritus, and paint — have become iconic works of post-apartheid South African art. Since her Ampersand Fellowship year, Siopis has exhibited at major international institutions and continues to make work that is both aesthetically powerful and politically urgent.
The Ampersand Fellowship
Since 1997, the Ampersand Foundation has sent more than 300 South African visual artists to a funded residency in Tribeca, New York — connecting them with one of the world's most dynamic art ecosystems.