ON PLATO, PYRAMIDS, AND PORT ELIZABETH: JENNIFER ORD AND POSTSTRUCTURALISM.

This article discusses the artwork and philosophy of Jennifer Mary Ord (1948-2024), an outlier artist who lived and worked in Port Elizabeth (now Gqeberha) for most of her life, and whose conceptual art has not received any previous critical attention. Examining Ord’s work through the lens of two articles she published in the South African Journal of Art History, as well as some of her work that was recently exhibited at the Bird Street Gallery, Nelson Mandela University, I argue that Ord was a highly sophisticated and playful poststructuralist visual artist, whose work was intended to deconstruct the foundational tenets of European philosophy, which she viewed as central to colonialism, racism, and patriarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]