Associate Professor Berni Searle lectures Videography at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. Searle works with lens-based media to stage narratives connected to history, memory and place. Often politically and socially engaged, her work also draws on emotions associated with vulnerability, loss and beauty. Her work was included in the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale, the 1998 Cairo Biennale, and the 2001 and 2005 Venice Biennales. Searle received a UNESCO award in 1998, the Minister of Culture prize at the Dak’art 2000 Biennale, and was nominated for the FNB VITA Art Award 2000 as well as the Daimler-Chrysler Award for South African Contemporary Art in 2000. In 2001, she was awarded a Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, was the Standard Bank Young Artist award recipient in 2003. She was shortlisted for the first Artes Mundi award in 2004.