Her interdisciplinary practice since the national liberation of her country has explored the persistence and fragility of memory, notions of truth and the complex entanglements of personal and collective histories. These works were followed by her 'history paintings', interpreted as a form of resistance against apartheid.
She came to prominence in the early 1980s with her 'cake' paintings, which materially encode feminist aesthetics in thick impasto oil paint surfaces. With an Honorary Doctorate from Rhodes University, Makhanda – Siopis is currently Honorary Professor at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town. During this time she was also visiting research fellow at the University of Leeds (1992–93) and visiting Professor in Fine Arts at Umeå University in Sweden (2000) as part of an interinstitutional exchange. In 1984 she took up a lectureship at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. She taught Fine Arts at the Technikon Natal in Durban from 1980 to 1983. Siopis studied Fine Arts at Rhodes University in Makhanda, completing her master's degree in 1976, after which she pursued postgraduate studies at Portsmouth Polytechnic in the United Kingdom. She was born in Vryburg in the North West province from Greek parents who had moved after inheriting a bakery from Siopis maternal grandfather. Penny Siopis (born 5 February 1953) is a South African artist from Cape Town.
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