Kim Berman - Alex Under Siege 1-8, 1986

Kim Berman (1960)
Alex Under Siege: 1, 2 (1986)
Series: Alex Under Siege
Drypoint, monoprint on paper / 1290 x 800 mm
CCAC #0026

Donated by the artist

Berman’s childhood nanny’s sister, who lost a child while she was caring for suburban white children, is depicted in this tribute to the black women of Alexandra township who resisted the apartheid police. The artwork draws reference from a photograph taken by Peter Magubane.

Alex Under Siege: 3, 4 (1986)
Series: Alex Under Siege
Drypoint, monoprint on paper / 1290 x 800 mm
CCAC #0027

Donated by the artist

This series of eight panels was made at the height of the second State of Emergency, decrying difficult living conditions in Alexandra township, whilst the artist was working for the ANC-aligned organisation Fund for a Free South Africa.

Alex Under Siege: 5, 6(1986)
Series: Alex Under Siege
Drypoint, monoprint on paper / 1 290 x 800 mm
CCAC #0028

Donated by the artist

The artist saw her role to bear witness to atrocities committed by the apartheid state. Berman was involved in smuggling banned images from the Afrapix photographic collective in South Africa to the anti-apartheid movement in exile, which inspired her own art-making.

Alex Under Siege: 7, 8 (1986)
Series: Alex Under Siege
Drypoint, monoprint on paper / 1290 x 80 mm
CCAC #0029

Donated by the artist

The images in Alex Under Siege were inspired by documentary photographs taken in the 1980s by Peter Magubane, Alf Khumalo, Omar Badsha, Gideon Mendel and Paul Weinberg, some of whom belonged to the Afrapix photographic collective.

Photographs by Ben Law-Viljoen