Mikhael Subotzky

Mikhael Subotzky (b. 1981, Cape Town) is a Johannesburg based artist whose works in multiple mediums engage critically with the instability of images and the politics of representation.

Subotzky studied at Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town and his first body of photographic work, Die Vier Hoeke (The Four Corners), was an in-depth study of the South African penal system. Umjiegwana (The Outside) and Beaufort West extended this investigation to the relationship between everyday life in post-apartheid South Africa and the historical, spatial and institutional structures of control.

Subotzky joined Magnum Photos in 2007.

His practice has evolved to include film installation, video, photography, collage and painting. His work has been included on number of important international exhibitions, including most recently Global(e) Resistance, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020 – 2021), Masculinities: Liberation through Photography, Barbican Centre, London (2020) and Inheritance: Recent Video Art from Africa, the Fowler Museum at UCLA, Los Angeles (2019).

His Ponte City project (co-authored with Patrick Waterhouse) was the recipient of the 2015 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and was presented at Art Basel Unlimited in 2018. The full exhibition and archive of this project has since been acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and will be the subject of a monographic exhibition.

Subotzky’s work was included in Lubumbashi (2013) and Liverpool (2012) biennials. Pixel Interface, a multi-component video installation, was included in All The World’s Futures, curated by Okwui Enwezor at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015).