Painting with … cake tools?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Siopis
Penny Siopis has made her name known for her work and the ideas she expresses through them. Her paintings, films, photography, etc combine different inspirations and materials together to create unique pieces.
Siopis is a feminist who wants to make the voices of women heard. The female body is the main focus in her works, but they comment on a larger social problem. She has worked with other feminists in the past to increase the scale and complexity of her critiques.
Siopis had first gained recognition through her cake paintings. For this she used piping nozzles and cake-decorating to apply oil paint, creating a textured surface. Because the paint is applied in very thick layers, it’s unaffected by time and gravity, protecting itself from decay. This is a metaphor for the effects of time on a female body; it serves to dramatize Western beauty standards and idealization of women in general.
Birthday Cake (2021).
https://www.straussart.co.za/auctions/lot/17-may-2021/138
She then created the “history paintings,” a clear shift from her cake paintings. These delve into colonization and how it has impacted South African society. They reference European and African culture to indirectly represent colonial history and invisible power structures.
History painting
https://africanah.org/penny-siopis-south-africa/
Those were most well known paintings, but some other themes she explores are poverty, race, violence as seen in “Pinky Pinky” (2001-2004), Melancholia (1986), and Shame paintings (2002-2005).
Pinky Pinky
https://www.artprintsa.com/penny-siopis.html
Siopis sees her work as very open and where her materials can be connected to a bigger political and personal context. To improve herself as an artist, she has been expanding the materials she uses. In the past decade, she’s been using ink and glue that mix and swirl easily to create unpredictable images that even she didn’t know could be made.