Jane Alexander is one of the most important contemporary artists working in South Africa to have received international recognition. Born in Johannesburg in 1959, her figurative sculptures, installations, tableaux and photomontages are informed by the experience of growing up under apartheid1 and can be read as a response to that political and social environment and what followed in relation to broader global conditions. Alexander creates her figures first in plaster and then sometimes casts them in fiberglass before completing them with oil paint. In her early works she incorporated found objects like horns and bones into the figures. More recently she has utilised a wide range of found or commissioned clothing, shoes and other objects to dress and accessorise the figures.
