The Academy of Fine Arts awarded the 10th Mario Avati Engraving Prize 2025 to South African artist Diane Victor.
Often complex, Diane Victor’s images, where the sacred merges with the profane, are rendered through a line that reconciles precision with expressivity. They draw on multiple sources: biblical parables, foundational myths, allegories, traditional cultures, self-staging, news imagery, observed scenes, and citations from artists of the past.
Many of her figures are depicted bent beneath a burden, a weight that symbolises the pressures of oppression, patriarchy, or religion. At their feet unfold landscapes, often given over to flames, like the ruins of a lost paradise.
Others are clad in animal skins, leaving it unclear whether they are concealing themselves, protecting themselves, disguising themselves, or, in this gesture, revealing their ferocity or bestiality (Victor also does not overlook the erotic dimension of fur, as celebrated by Sacher-Masoch).
Disquieting and compelling, Victor’s dense, politically engaged work explores human fragility and social and political violence, transforming black into an expressive medium. She evokes the social and political realities of her native country, marked by the legacy of apartheid, systemic violence, injustice, and identity tensions. Her work is characterised by a masterful command of line, rooted in a classical figurative tradition, which she juxtaposes with contemporary and ephemeral materials such as soot and ash.
The exhibition at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, ends on 31 May 2026
