Doris Boris Berman’s artwork was at risk of become a fading memory after she died in 2015. However, thanks to the efforts of several people, the Southwestern College Art Gallery has become the savior of her work.
Born in Austria, Berman started off as a recording artist and received recognition for her work during the Cold War. Her music was geared towards the youth culture at the time and she signed recording contracts with big record labels like CBS Records. She eventually moved San Francisco and became a multimedia artist. During her time on the West Coast, she met Perry Vasquez, an SWC Art Instructor, who was an admirer of her work. Overtime, they became close friends. Following her death, Vasquez chose the Southwestern College Art Gallery as the place to show off Berman’s work.
An artist of many talents, Berman aimed to create an image of what life was like in a patriarchal society. Through the art gallery “Games without Frontiers,” her work was put on display along with Lissa Corona and Marina Grize, two other like-minded artists.
“He had an idea of wanting to exhibit his friend’s work (Doris Boris Berman) and he had talked to me about the kind of energy that she had,” said Corona, who teaches at La Jolla Country Day School. “The determination to make a statement with her work and he felt that my work and Marina’s work would also reflect that same energy.”
“FotoAktion” by Berman are a series of photographic prints that were captured in the U.S. in 1982-1984. These rough black-and-white prints captured the urban youth cultures of her day. Set in a barren white studio, the subjects took their photos with the bulb cable used in cameras back then. The result was photographs that were less polished and more casual since the subject, rather than the photographer, squeezed on the cable to take the shot. Each photo consisted of different people wearing gangster clothes and performing actions from smoking to someone wearing a gas mask with their hands placed on their hips.
“FotoAktion” was her response to drive-by street photography that would secretly capture the photographer’s subjects. She felt this method was making people into objects and stealing moments from their life. When she took these photos, she wanted her subjects to be involved with self-expression and interact with her by performing actions that represented their youth.
“Why” by Corona was done on a risograph print on paper and depicted a woman shaded in red sobbing and screaming by herself. It was arranged vertically in a stack of three with the same piece repeated on each photo. It represents a lot of Corona’s work about being a woman in a patriarchal society.
“I like to respond to that (Why) by showing examples of frustrated, angry, sad, and vulnerable women commemorating those emotions while finding that kind of bond or connection with people who see the work,” Corona said. “If you see someone angry or you see someone crying, my hope is that you in turn also feel something or wonder at least what has upset this person.”
In contrast to Berman and Corona, Grize’s work wasn’t on a canvas or photograph, but was all language-based. It including poetry like: “I think of loss greater than this to put out the small fire you left in my belly” and “See you, see me.” Grize’s art took up an entire wall, as she wanted her poetry to be taken out of context and not on an ordinary page. She wanted the viewers to see them for what they say and not to find deeper meaning within them. When looking at them, there was an immediate sense to analyze what it meant rather than question the norm of society.
Grize described these words as something that is being described already. “Not everything is an analogy. I think they mean exactly what they say,” said Grize, who is an independent curative director. Her work is a reflection of Berman’s art due to its ability to make people question the world they live in. Both Grize and Corona’s art are from today even though Grize is more direct with her art rather than Corona and Berman.
The paradoxes that the three artists exert in their pieces are meant to reflect their views on society and have viewers challenge their perception on what is considered the norm.
