Kim Berman
Kim Berman is an NRF-Rated scholar and Full Professor in Visual Art at the University of Johannesburg (UJ) and Executive Director of Artist Proof Studio (APS), a community-based printmaking centre in Newtown, Johannesburg which she co-founded APS with the late Nhlanhla Xaba in 1991. Born in Johannesburg in 1960, Kim Berman has been an activist artist for over twenty years. Beginning with her study with Paul Stopforth at the University of Witwatersrand, (B.F.A), and continuing through her graduate work at Tufts University/the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (M.F.A, 1990), Berman has addressed the politics and social conditions in South Africa in her art both realistically and metaphorically. Her work was her artistic response to Apartheid and the anti-Apartheid struggle, the establishment of a democratic government, the testimonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the ongoing challenges of poverty and disease.
In addition to serving as Senior Lecturer in Printmaking at the University of Johannesburg, Berman has founded three projects that have proven her faith in the vital role visual art can play in social transformation. The Artists Proof Studio, founded in 1992 in Johannesburg, now supports and educates over 100 young artists. Phumani Paper, a nationwide project using hand papermaking for poverty alleviation, employs several hundred people. Paper prayers, a nationwide paper and embroidery project for AIDS awareness, continues its grassroots work to support a population universally affected by the pandemic.
As she wrote in 2003: “In the 80s, while living and studying in Boston I was consumed by the drive to bear testimony to the aggression and violence of the apartheid regime. After 1990, the leadership of Nelson Mandela personified the concept of ‘ubuntu’ of the people working together. It is this spirit that has pulled South Africa from the brink of dehumanization into humanity and democracy- and it is this inspiration of reaching out to re-imagine a new identity for ourselves that is the challenge for South Africans.”
Kim is an extraordinary human rights activist. She is he author of Finding Voice: an autobiographical account of her work in “disenfranchised communities as a tool for political and social transformation in South Africa…She “documents the visual arts as a crucial channel for citizens to find their individual voices and to become agents for change in the arenas of human rights and democracy.”
I met Kim my very first year at Tufts in 1985 when she was a graduate student at the Museum School. We both were deeply concerned with apartheid in South Africa, and met in the context of her politics and I began to appreciate her extraordinary graphics and artistic skills. I asked her to create the graphics for the first 3 posters of my symposium efforts. Most notably International Terrorism, but subsequently the next three: the West Bank and Gaza strip, Foreign Policy Imperatives for the Next Presidency, and Covert Action. and Democracy. We maintained a close friendship over the years, and it was my privilege to honor her with a distinguished alumni award and to participate in a major exhibition of her work. On the occasion of my retirement and becoming Emeritus in 2016 she surprised me with an original print of the 1985-86 poster:
For Sherman, (from: State of Emergency 1985/EPIIC Terrorism) with my deep gratitude and respect for your EPIIC legacy that reaches across the world…
Berman’s art exemplifies this idealism but does not flinch from the enormous challenges the country continues to face. There are many ways I could seek to describe the uniqueness of Kim, whose friendship I cherish but there is no better way for people to understand her character and courage than in the words of Justice Albi Sachs:
I had the pleasure of meeting Albi and on several occasions cheering him on as he ran and completed the Boston Marathon.
I had the privilege and honor of honoring Kim in the context of the EPIIC program on the Politics of Fear as an example of fearlessness.
In 2014 on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Institute, my students surprised me by raising nearly nearly a half a million dollars and endowing the EPIIC colloquium in my name. They created this large plaque to commemorate the occasion and presented it to me at the gala.
This was the print created by one of Kim’s students, which arrived too late to be superimposed on the plexiglass.
Kim further surprised me by giving me several of the large prints that sit at the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which show the women in the struggle against Apartheid. This hangs in my home in Truro.
