Berni Searle works with photography and the moving image. Often using herself in her work, she explores issues of self-representation, the relationship between personal and collective identity and narratives connected to history, memory and place. While her works are often explored in dialogue with the socio-political legacy of South Africa and in relation to current day realities, her use of metaphor and poetic ambiguity transcend the specificity of context, drawing on shared human emotions associated with displacement, vulnerability and loss. The politics and poetics of place have always been of central concern in her work. Searle attended Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, and her work has since been exhibited globally, including the 49th and 51st Venice Biennale.