Since the early 1990s, she has explored the mediation of identity, history, and destiny in a globalised media landscape, often inserting her own body into reworked archival and documentary footage. Vári’s densely layered works trace the fragmentary nature of historical narratives, reframing them as subjective retellings shaped by omission, distortion, and personal insight. Alongside her moving-image practice, her works on paper and canvas extend these themes into intimate, tactile forms.
Vári has exhibited her work since the early nineties, participating in group exhibitions such as Banquete, ZKM Karlsruhe; Personal Affections: Power and Poetics in Contemporary South African Art, Museum of African Art, New York; the Venice Biennale (2001 and 2007); the 1st Havana Biennial and The Divine Comedy: Heaven, Hell and Purgatory revisited by contemporary African artists, MKK Frankfurt. Her solo exhibitions include 'Chimera' at Art Unlimited, Basel; 'Vigil' at Elga Wimmer Gallery with Serge Ziegler, New York; 'Songs of Excavation' and 'The Eleventh Hour', both at the Goodman Gallery in South Africa, and 'Of Darkness and of Light', a mid-career survey at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg.
