Karlien de Villiers

Karlien de Villiers (Cape Town, December 22, 1975) is a South African artist. She is the author of an autobiographical comic book entitled My Mother was a Beautiful Woman, about her childhood and the time of apartheid, seen from a white family. She has also produced several paintings and sculptures. From 2006 to 2017, she was a lecturer at the Stellenbosch University, where she herself studied drawing and illustration from 1994 to 1997. Previously, she lectured at the University of Pretoria (2003–2006). Since 2019, she has been a lecturer in Design, Illustration and Art Direction at Stellenbosch Academy of Design and Photography.

Biography Born in 1975 in Cape Town, from a white middle class background, she was not really aware of apartheid during her early childhood. “For a long time in my childhood, I didn't question a fact: that white people dominated, had the best jobs and the best schools, and laid on beaches separated from black people. Our parents told us that it was normal for all the domestic workers to be black", she explains. She was 11 when her mother died of cancer. She and her sister were sent to a boarding school and encountered other backgrounds: "in the midst of my misfortune, I discovered that I belonged to the privileged class".

Continuing as an artist, making paintings and sculptures, she has also worked as an illustrator for children's literature, and as a lecturer in her initial art school at the Stellenbosch University.

Awards and honours 2011, UNESCO-Aschberg Bursary for Visual Arts 2011, Top 20 Finalist: Sovereign Art Foundation African Art Prize 2002, National Arts Council Grant 2001, National Research Foundation Research Grant 2001, University of Pretoria Academic Merit Bursary 1997, Best Final Year Student in Design, Stellenbosch University 1997, Best Final Year Student Graphic Design+Illustration, Stellenbosch University

Selected works My Mother was a Beautiful Woman (2006)