Kim Berman
b. 1960
South Africa

Director of the Artist Proof Studio in Newtown, Johannesburg, Berman obtained her bachelor of fine arts from the University of Witwatersrand and a master of fine arts from Tufts University in Boston. She taught at the Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1988 until 1992 and continued to offer workshops there through the late 1990s. Berman returned to South Africa to establish collaborative printmaking projects. She is also a senior lecturer in the fine arts department of the Technikon at the University of Witwatersrand.

Playing Cards of the Truth Commission: Incomplete Deck
1999
Mezzotint and drypoint on paper
Each sheet: 60.5 x 40.5 cm (23 13/16 x 15 15/16 in.)
2000-7-1, museum purchase
(on view May-August 2001)

The topic of this suite of prints is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a popular subject for South Africa's artists. In early 1996, two years after South Africa's first truly democratic elections, the commission began hearing testimonies from individuals who considered themselves agents, victims or survivors of apartheid. The overarching purpose of this process was to create a context in which the nation's pains might be reconciled.

Berman's work identifies the guilty and bears witness to their crimes of word and action. The guilty figures emerge out of shadowy backgrounds, the faces often lit by a sickly green color. The words chronicle a tragic history of murder, torture, repression and complicity. By scratching the surface of the print, thereby marring the face of the guilty, Berman reveals her anger at the system.