Dr Linda Kuhn (b. 1964, Bachelor of Arts and Multimedia, UNISA)
Dr Linda Kuhn is a medical professional-turned-mixed-media artist whose practice emerged later in life, bringing together intuition formed through medicine and the exploratory freedom of fine art. Born in 1964, she earned her MBChB in 1987 and MMed (Anaesthesia) in 1996, establishing a long career as an anaesthesiologist in private practice. Over the years of medical work she developed a visual sensibility grounded in years of experience, discipline, and “automatic and often intuitive” responses to complex environments.
In her mid-fifties Linda re-entered academia, completing a Bachelor of Arts in Multimedia at the University of South Africa in 2017. It was at this point that her long‐standing practice of pen-and-ink doodling matured into a serious art practice. Her work is strongly inspired by eco‐feminist writing, particularly the work of Donna Haraway, and by her UNISA lecturers, who she credits for awakening her engagement with the visual arts.
As an artist, she describes her focus as pointing to the ignored and overlooked. She works with found and discarded medical materials, transforming them into activated canvases: from a collection of shark eggs gathered on the beach, to flotsam and jetsam turned into mixed-media collages and thermoplastic sculptures. Her practice emphasises repurposing, repair, and the notion that a found object is already primed for transformation.
Linda’s recent exploration of intermediality—drawing, photography, printmaking, ink, pastels—has opened up expansive possibilities for integrative artworks, where form and function of materials merge and artworks become layered dialogues of image, object and concept. Her installation Flow in 2015 for example, uses puzzle-shaped wooden forms to invoke fragmentation and reconnection.
Her selected exhibitions include the third-year UNISA exhibition in 2022 and group show at the White River Gallery, including Wild in 2025 where she participated alongside other artists exploring human impact on nature through a workshop offered through the CAP Institute for Contemporary Art Practice facilitated by its founder Professor Elfriede Dreyer.
Linda continues to live and practise in South Africa, bridging the worlds of medicine and art, and offering a unique voice within the contemporary art field—one that weaves together healing, material re-use, narrative and subtle activism.
"I realised that art does not necessarily entail a beautiful picture or sculpture and I am definitely more critical. It is about the concept behind the portrayal and each work seeks to convey a certain message to the viewer, every true artist has something to say and a certain artwork is always an insight into and a depiction of the artists way of critical thinking."- Linda Raath
