Alexander was born in Johannesburg and has a Bachelor and a Master of Arts in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand.

She is known for her installations, tableaux and photomontages prompted by social and political conditions in South Africa and abroad in which sculpted hybrid figures featuring human and nonhuman animal forms appear.

Her work has been widely shown in exhibitions in South Africa and internationally, as well as created for and installed at specific sites including African Adventure (1999-2002) in the British Officers’ Mess of the Castle of Good Hope, Cape Town (2002); Courtroom 21 (in the absence of Judge W) / Courtroom 21 / Title withdrawn / Verity, Faith and Justice [sic] in Courtroom 21 of Singapore City Hall (Singapore Biennale, 2006); Harbinger with barge and imperial landscape (North Sea) on the beach of St André, Oostduinkerke, Belgium (Triennial Beaufort, 2006); Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope) in various sites of the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine, New York (2013); and Infirmary in a detonator store of the former Tamboerskloof Magazine at Erf 81, a military base in Cape Town (2020).

Exhibitions include the Havana, Venice, Dakar, São Paulo and Gwangju Biennales; The Short Century and Rise and Fall of Apartheid curated by Okwui Enwezor; Africa Remix and The Divine Comedy curated by Simon Njami; and Africas: The Artist and the City, Apartheid: the South African Mirror and Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope) curated by Pep Subirós. Her work has been acquired for various private and public collections including the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; and Tate Modern, London.

She is a professor in the sculpture section of the Fine Art Department of the University of Cape Town.

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