Throughout her art career, Susan Woolf has undertaken social interventionist art projects that expose people and environment issues. These art projects include collaborations with various communities and individuals in South Africa and are intrinsic to the fabric of Woolf’s art, which is usually historically or community based.
Woolf is known for her conceptual artworks, which includes the Healing installation and 30 resin and steel Art Books, exhibited in Museum Africa and the five storey high, three ton, aluminium kinetic Mobile City for Absa Bank (collaboration with architects Levin & Cawood), which was the subject for her Masters Degree dissertation “The Conceptual and Practical Realisation of a Corporate Art Commission”.
Two diverse projects may well be the most exciting projects toward her life’s work:
The first is a carved wooden Maquette entitled “Witness: Shadow of UBUNTU”. A design for eleven outdoor sculptures which stand in a specific position under the sun. Designed to be 40 meters across, the ‘Witnesses’ cast shadows which collectively read ‘UBUNTU’ throughout the year, every day between 10am and 11am.
The other is sizeable arts project of Taxi hand signs for sighted and blind people. For the purpose of history and practical usage, Woolf is currently recording and capturing recognised taxi destinations and relating them to the taxi hand signs used to hail mini bus taxis. After two years the first book of Taxi hand signs for sighted and blind was published March 2007. The project is commuter driven, aimed at tourists, scholars and taxi drivers towards and beyond 2010.
Woolf has designed 14 easily read tactile symbols for the blind, the combinations of which represent all the taxi art signs. The shapes are made of raised brail dots and have been approved by the SABWA committee (South African Blind Workers Association) and the SA National Council for the Blind. The book, “Taxi Hand Signs for the Blind”, was launched in Museum Africa 30 September 2009. The booklet for all commuters will be launched in 29 Jan 2010, together with the Taxi hand signs for both blind and sighted on the South African National commemorative stamps and envelopes. Currently enrolled at WITS University, Woolf is doing a cross disciplinary PhD thesis in Anthropology and Art entitled “Taxi Hand Signs in Social Spaces”.
