Absa Art Hot Spot
Empowering African fine arts
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under Seas
Artist Bio
Ruth Sacks, born in 1977 in Port Elizabeth, is a South African visual artist and academic who lives in Johannesburg.
She has exhibited widely locally and internationally including at the Museum for Contemporary Art Antwerp (M KHA), ZKM |Centre for Art and Media, Performa 09, the Kunstverein Amsterdam, the National Museums of Kenya, Iwalewa-Haus, the African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale and the Architecture, Art and Landscape Biennale of the Canaries.
Sacks is a member of faculty in the University of Johannesburg (department of Visual Arts) and holds a PhD (Arts) from the University of the Witwatersrand where she was a fellow at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research.
Her 4th artist book, The Remaindering, will be launched later in 2021.
Artist Statement
Ruth Sacks is a South African artist whose research-based practice largely takes the form of artist books and installations. This small selection of her artist books draws on recurring themes in her work, including postcolonial readings of classic European fiction. Ruth also explores ideas of how the lines between natural and unnatural environments have become blurred from today's perspective. The artist's prose and design function together to reflect design styles with particular ideologies attached to them.