b.1961, Pretoria

Playing the part of court jester, Brett Murray’s darkly humorous work pairs pop culture with political satire. Poking fun at South Africa’s imperfect transition to democracy is a long-standing and provocative preoccupation in Murray’s work. Such poking – in a country still marked by apartheid’s legacy – has proved a dangerous game. The artist, however, is no stranger to public outrage. “I know I’ve succeeded,” he says, “when my work is offensive to some.” The laughter his work inspires is more often uncomfortable. There are no easy jokes in the nation’s body politic. His visual punchlines, critic Hazel Friedman wrote, confront “the viewer in that place where a laugh and gasp are indistinguishable.” They also confront defamation lawsuits. Murray became a figure of public scandal in 2011 after his painting The Spear – depicting then-president Jacob Zuma with genitals exposed – was lambasted as obscene, vulgar, distasteful, and indecent. The president complained, without apparent irony, that the work painted him “a philanderer and womaniser.” Shortly after, the painting was vandalised. Murray, shaken but unharmed, suggested his “dick joke” had caused some “prevarication” in the nation’s courts.