The video works of South African artist Minnette Vári (*1968 Pretoria, lives and works in Johannesburg) explore her deep interest in questions of identity, destiny and history in today’s world of global media. Of Hungarian descent, having grown up in a dramatically, politically and socially changing country, she examines the complex relationship between individual experience of her own history and the mediated form of information. In her dense video animations she traces the fragmentary character of all historical writing back to a process of retelling and re-appropriation. She understands history as an individually re-told collection of facts, submitted to eliminating, stressing and editing according to individual insights. In these terms she brings into play the inability of our memory as an infallible store of information. Furthermore Vári raises questions not only of personal destiny and identity but of gender and race in general terms by including herself as a permanently morphing projection surface. Implicitly about personal experience it reminds us of the fragility of everybody’s own political and social attitudes.

The first solo show of Minnette Vári at an international museum will focus on her video work from the last four years including a new production realized specially for this venue and an out-door projection onto the gigantic roof underside of Jean Noevel’s KKL. In conjunction with the exhibition there will be published an extended monographic catalogue.