Lucienne Bestall (b.1992, South Africa) is a curatorial researcher and writer. She holds a degree in Fine Art and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town. Lucienne has contributed to several surveys from Phaidon, and her essay All the Dead is included in the anthology Our Ghosts Were Once People (Jonathan Ball, 2022). Another essay, A History of Fire, was published by Raritan (Rutgers University, 2021) and is listed among the notable essays and literary non-fiction in The Best American Essays anthology (HarperCollins Publishers, 2022). She works at A4 Arts Foundation.
Publications
Except for Breath: Reflections on Image and Memory from Karavan Press, 2025 (forthcoming)
cherub face in whiskey crate in LIKE A FEVER, Asia Art Archive, 2024
Mother’s Mother’s Milk in TPCReview, Issue 1, 2024
Entries on Alice Adams, Nairy Baghramian, Fiona Connor, Barbara Hepworth, Sherrie Levine, Liza Lou, Sarah Lucas, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba, Patricia Piccinini, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Claudette Schreuders, and Usha Seejarim included in Great Women Sculptors, Phaidon, 2024
Entries on Raymond Boisjoly, Adam Pendleton, Michele Pred, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Isaac Zavale included in Vitamin Txt: Words in Contemporary Art, Phaidon, 2024
The Pricking of Love in Image, 2024
Entries on Maria Nepomuceno, Abdias do Nascimento, Abigail Reyes, Antonio José Guzman, Artur Lescher, Carlos Mérida, Claudia Andujar, Emilio Pettoruti, Lucia Koch, María Freire, and Wifredo Lam included in Latin American Artists, Phaidon, 2023
The Lives of Others: Gabrielle Goliath’s ‘This song is for…’ in ArtThrob: 25 Years of Art Writing in South Africa, ArtThrob, 2023
Entries on Adam Broomberg, Nico Krijno, and Gerde Scheepers in Vitamin C+, Phaidon, 2023
Entries on Grace Crowley, Laura Knight, Amy Sillman, Pat Steir, Irma Stern, Jade Fadojutimi, Clare Woods, Marguerite Thompson Zorach, and Mary Beale in Great Women Painters, Phaidon, 2022
Entries on Bronwyn Katz, Igshaan Adams, Rachel Rose, Devin N. Morris, Becky Suss, and Chantal Peñalosa in Prime: Art’s Next Generation, Phaidon, 2022
Entries on Marlene Dumas, Cecil Skotnes, Margaret Courtney-Clarke, and Mimi Cherono Ng’ok in African Artists, Phaidon, 2021
All the Dead in Our Ghosts Were Once People, Jonathan Ball, 2021
A History of Fire in Raritan, Rutgers University Press, 2021
Home in The Journey: New Positions in African Photography, Kerber Verlag, 2020
Projects
Revisitations, [in review], 2021
The Archive Project, A4 Arts Foundation, 2020 – ongoing
Features
On Reflection: Mirrors and Bodies, ArtThrob, 2020
The Wrong Window: Reflections on Empty Images, ArtThrob, 2020
Fourteen False Starts: Conversations with Ian Grose, Stevenson, 2017
Reviews
Accumulations: Zander Blom’s ‘Garage-ism’, ArtThrob, 2021
What Remains: Kevin Beasley’s ‘Without a Clear Discernible Image’, ArtThrob, 2020
The Lives of Others: Gabrielle Goliath’s ‘This song is for…’, ArtThrob, 2019
Once More With Feeling: William Kentridge at Zeitz MOCAA, ArtThrob, 2019
Stone Cold: Alfredo Jaar’s ‘Men Who Cannot Cry’, ArtThrob, 2019
Another Eden: Ruby Swinney’s ‘Human Nature’, ArtThrob, 2018
Thin Black Line: Blake Daniels and Dorothee Kreutzfeldt’s ‘City Without a Sun’, ArtThrob, 2018
Repetition Fatigue: Dan Halter’s ‘Patience Can Cook a Stone’, ArtThrob, 2018
Pretty Vacant: ‘New Romantic’ at Barnard Gallery, ArtThrob, 2018
Catalogue Essays
Paint by Numbers, Cathy Abraham’s Yielding to the Shadow, IBI Art, 2023
White Night, Brett Murray’s Hide, Everard Read, 2021
The Silent Image, Sanell Aggenbach’s The Heart Has Many Rooms, Everard Read, 2019
The Tie That Binds, Grace Cross’s MOTHER IS A DRUM, Smith Studio, 2019
The Art of Intimacy, Close Encounters, Smith Studio, 2018
Camel Blue is the Loneliest Colour, Sorrel Hofmann’s &Friends, AVA Gallery, 2017
Press Releases
Michaela Younge, A Tight Squeeze, SMAC, 2024
Nicola Bailey, A Gentle Entanglement, Everard Read, 2023
Sanell Aggenbach, The Great Lulllllll, Whatiftheworld, 2021
Michaela Younge, Nothing Bad, Smith Studio, 2019
Mia Chaplin, Binding Forms, Whatiftheworld, 2016
Morné Visagie, The Line of Beauty, Whatiftheworld, 2015