diane victor

to say that the work that diane victor does blew me completely away is putting it lightly. she is profiled in this month's issue of Juxtapoz which is featuring African art.

"these works are made with candle smoke on paper, a medium i came across by a chance experiment. it involves literally catching smoke on paper. the medium is fragile and transient, dissolving if you try to stabilize them with fixative. drawings are smoked onto a surface suspended about my head and range from A3 format to over 1.5 meters in size.

i have worked with portraits of marginalized and threatened people. shown here are examples from the series on HIV positive community member from the impoverished East Cape in South Africa, fragile and ephemeral lives often dissolving unrecorded, left as traces of smoke on paper. Transient and vulnerable lives in a fragile society"

-diane victor

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text excerpted from Juxtapoz #94 Nov, 2008 issue