PREMIER EXHIBITION

Contemporary Arts Forum

Santa Barbara, California
November 4 – December 23, 1995

Nancy Doll, Director of the Contemporary Arts Forum
Rita Ferri, Assistant Director
Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, Coordinator
Elena Siff, WBB Curator, Coordinator

I am prouder than ever before for being a woman. I could feel the women whispering, like clocks ticking, like all these wild, intentional undone heartbeats. I will tell everyone.

– Valentina Grup-Kruip, Poet

A TIMELY ENDEAVOR

Women Beyond Borders is a timely endeavor as it brings together women’s visions from around the globe, at the end of a century marked by their struggles for rights and freedoms. It is also particularly important in that it cuts across all borders – physical, political, religious, and racial. The project is a celebration of women’s progress and movement forward as they connect with one another on a global level. The exhibition surpasses all of our expectations, high as they were! I am quite sure that the exhibition will be received enthusiastically everywhere it goes. It is sure to be one of our most popular exhibitions. It is also one of our most meaningful exhibitions. Through the collective efforts of WBB artists and curators, a beautifully simple idea has been transformed into a profound project that extends literally and symbolically far beyond physical and conceptual borders.

– Nancy Doll, former Director Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, 1995

There is no hierarchy in this exhibition. We are all creating a piece from the same inexpensive pine box and there is a real sense of us supporting one another. We are women artists of all ages, from all economic backgrounds and with varying degrees of professional reputation in the “art world.” As this project has grown and the dialogue with other international artists has increased, through the fax and Internet, it is apparent that there is a vital stream which is flowing among us as the exhibition begins its epic voyage. Whatever happens on the way is the essence of Women Beyond Borders.

– Elena Siff, WBB Artist

Rita Ferri, Assistant Director, Lorraine, guest, and Sojourner Kincaid Rolle, WBB artist

The Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum (now the Museum of Contemporary Art) was the site of the premiere exhibition on November 4th, 1995. In the exhibition were 185 boxes from Argentina, Australia, Finland, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Austria, Spain, Sweden, USA and Vietnam.

Some boxes brimmed with hope, others were burdened with oppression. At times humorous, and often conceptual, the objects express universal thoughts, feelings, hopes and dreams of women around our world. All together, this exhibition was an impressive anthology of various life-stories along with powerful statements. A record number of people attended and responded to the expressive power of each work, as well as the collective pulse of the exhibition.

Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, Be Ky Nguyen, WBB Artist, Suzie Vuong, WBB Artist, and Darlene Nguyen-Ely, WBB Artist

The original boxes served as a grassroots foundation of Women Beyond Borders, which then began its travels to virtually every continent. By word of mouth, exhibitions were scheduled by museums and galleries around the world.

Pilar Flores and her boyfriend traveled all the way from Ecuador to visit the exhibit.

Women representing various participating countries attended the opening. Meeting them was the highlight of the evening. Artists Lizet Benrey-Fuller and her mother Shirley Chernitsky traveled from Mexico City to attend. Ingeborg Pock and Eva Ursprung made the trip from Graz, Austria, Annica Karlsson-Rixon and Paulina Wallenberg Olsson represented Sweden at the event. Darlene Nguyen-Ely, Suzie Vuong, Be Ky Nguyen and her son represented Vietnam.

Hutchins Alice - Another Plaything, 1995, USA — Alice Hutchins – Another Plaything, 1995, USA

Women Beyond Borders is an exciting, ground breaking project. It’s untraditional, open ended, indeterminate and inclusive quality recalls some of the liberating works of the 60’s.

– Alice Hutchins, Fluxus and intermedia artist, 1995

The most far-reaching exhibition of the year was Women Beyond Borders, a reaffirmation that good things come in small packages. Small wooden boxes which were sent to women around the world came back as works of art, filled with meanings from politics to motherhood to feminism to pure art.

– Joan Crowder, Santa Barbara News Press, 1995

This exhibition has been created in a female way. What has been accomplished is a real model of how the feminine process works. One doesn’t have to bulldoze people over in process of moving forward. You can be nurturing, flexible, open, caring, non-judgmental — all of those wonderful female attributes which are very powerful in a universal way. This would never been done without give-and-take, without collaboration.

– Beverly Decker, WBB Artist, Teacher

Southern California artists Lorraine Serena and Elena Siff thought that women’s creativity had been boxed up for too long. So they devised a plan to exhibit women’s artwork internationally and blew the lid off the notion of art as a solitary experience

– Melissa Minkin, Writer

Lorraine Serena is a Woman of the World. She has been a forerunner of building international community as her artform. She has a passion for bringing diverse women together and assisting them to see their commonalities.

– Gail Berkus, Art Patron

You did a great service to the whole world. – Mercedes Eichholz, Art Patron

TEN YEAR RETROSPECTIVES

ucla-installation — Betsy Quick, Alicia Katano and Niki Dewart at the WBB Retrospective at UCLA

Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA

Los Angeles, CA
December 2, 2001 – April 21, 2002

Marla Berns, Executive Director, Curator

Christopher Scoates, Chief Curator

Betsy Quick, Director of Education

Anette G. Kubitza, Art Historian, Curator

University Art Museum, UCSB

Santa Barbara, CA
October 1 – December 15, 2002

Bonnie G. Kelm, Executive Director

Maria Vierra, Assistant Director

Niki Dewart, Director of Education

Lynne Sprecher, Coordinator

Anette Kubitza, Art Historian, Curator

Penny Paine, Girls Inc. Consultant

University of California Santa Barbara

Celebrating women worldwide for their creative expression, this powerful exhibition explored the nearly ten-year history and social impact of this unique international women’s art project. Transforming simple, identical boxes into vessels of artistic and cultural exchange, this retrospective featured nearly 150 of the diverse boxes from more than 36 countries around the world. Ranging from contemporary and abstract content to political and conscious-building messages, these compelling pieces give incredible insight into the lives of our individual communities while breaking down barriers and creating a global movement of women’s voices. – Anette G. Kubitza Ph.D., Art History

Lillian Lovelace, WBB Sponsor, Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, and Penny Paine, WBB Curator and Artist

Marla Berns, Director of the Fowler Museum, Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, Carol Kosterka, Attendee, and Rita Rivest, WBB Sponsor

UCSB Chancellor’s Wife, WBB Founder Lorraine Serena, and WBB Retrospective, and Bonnie Kelm, Executive Director, University Art Museum — UCSB Chancellor’s wife, Dilling Yang, WBB Founder Lorraine Serena, and Bonnie Kelm, Executive Director, University Art Museum

Henry T. Yang, Chancellor of UCSB, Dilling Yang, David Marshall, Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at UCSB

Women Beyond Borders is an inspiring, thought-provoking, and aesthetically thrilling project. The connections it has fostered among nations and among women are remarkable. It also becomes a testament to the unbounded possibilities of human creativity, tested here in the seemingly simple transformation of the same small wooden box. – Marla Berns

Transforming simple, identical boxes into vessels of artistic and cultural exchange, this retrospective features nearly 150 of the diverse boxes from more than 36 countries around the world. Ranging from contemporary and abstract content to political and conscious-building messages, these compelling pieces give incredible insight into the lives of our individual communities while breaking down barriers and creating a global movement of women’s voices. A selection of boxes from extensive adjunct projects, including the Los Angeles School district and Girls Inc. were also represented.

Some of the events that took place during the retrospectives included an International Symposium titled, “ Redrawing the Map/Conversation Beyond Borders”, which was organized by the University Art Museum in Santa Barbara. Keynote speakers included Suzanne Lacy, an artist, educator and writer, who inspired the project WBB from her work in Public Practice. A panel included Betty Ann Brown, professor of Art History, CSUN; Victoria Vesna, Chair at the Dept. of Design & Media Arts, UCLA School of the Arts; Gloria Alvarez, Chicana poet/intermedia artist in Los Angeles, among others.

At the opening in Santa Barbara, the Chancellor of UCSB, Henry T. Yang and his wife Dilling Yang attended the event, which included many cultural ceremonies, dancers and musicians representing all different cultures from around the world. The University Art Museum had over 7,000 viewers with adjunct projects coordinated with the UCSB Multicultural Center, Women’s Center and Girls Inc. of Santa Barbara, as well as the TRIBE Teen Program.

SEE THE GIRLS INC. PAGE

University of California Los Angeles

Betsy Quick, Director of Education, leading a group of Girls Inc. students

The retrospective at Fowler Museum at UCLA also had a successful opening and adjunct projects included ‘Girls Inc./Stepping Out of the Box’ featuring the works of hundred Girls Inc. participants from the greater Los Angeles area. Another adjunct project, titled Youth Beyond Borders, created a city-wide box project featuring 1,000 students from Los Angeles Unified School District.

A PATH WELL TRAVELED

Women Beyond Borders Catalog: The Art of Building a Community

Marla Berns

William Horberg, Elsa Mora, Penny Paine, Dawn Simonelli, Annette Kubiza, Lorraine Serena, Victoria Vesna and her daughter

The remarkable trajectory of Women Beyond Borders traces a story of relationships amongst artists, colleagues, women, and friends. The small group of Santa Barbara artists who conceived this international art project in 1991 never could have imagined its subsequent journey and impact.

I was lucky to have been one of the individuals who sat around a table in Lorraine Serena’s studio one winter evening to discuss the possibilities and challenges of launching a traveling exhibition that would bring together the work of women artists around the world the decision to build the project around the transformation of a small wooden box led to the initial distribution of 200 boxes to women in 15 countries.

Like the collaborative process underlying the conceptualization of Women Beyond Borders, the inaugural “call for entries” drew on relationships and contacts that the project founders, Lorraine Serena and Elena Siff, had with curators and artists abroad. The 185 boxes that came back to Santa Barbara served as the foundation of Women Beyond Borders, which then began its travels to virtually every continent in the world.

The stunning success of Women Beyond Borders lives in its ability to cross many borders— from local to global, personal to public, singular to collective. The accumulation of boxes is impressive by virtue of its scale: more than 800 artists have created and contributed boxes that have been exhibited in over 40 unique settings. These contributions attest to the strength of women’s voices and their enthusiastic responses to using a simple box as a vehicle for a highly individual statement. Exhibited together, The boxes are astonishing by virtue of their global reach, ethnic diversity, artistic variety, and expressive range.

That’s such a simple object that has offered so much to so many is a testament to the foresight of Women Beyond Borders founders. It is clear that Lorraine and Elena have been struck by the willingness of so many women to open their hearts and share their most intimate desires, fears, joys, and sorrows. The project has yielded more than an exhibition of fascinating objects: it has established a worldwide network among women that has surely exceeded all expectations. Women Beyond Borders has made individual creative expression a valued avenue for communication across cultures.

While each transformed box is a highly personal statement, the scale of intimacy has permitted many of the participants the safety of bold and even risky messages. Women Beyond Borders has built a global community in which women’s shared, yet individual life experiences have given them common ground. Over the years I have marveled at the remarkable reception of Women Beyond Borders in such far-flung places as Kenya, Singapore, and Russia.

Marla Burns, Executive Director of the Fowler Museum in UCLA and Co-Curator of the Exhibition, Lorraine Serena, Founder of WBB, Allegra Fuller Snyder, Professor of Dance and Ethnology at UCLA

The 10-year retrospective exhibition was organized by the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History and the University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, in collaboration with Women Beyond Borders. Titled Women Beyond Borders: The Art of Building Community, it served as a document of the world tour representing a selection of boxes from international artists. During the exhibition’s run at the Fowler Museum (December 2, 2001-April 21, 2002), it was fascinating to observe the responses of visitors, many of whom were seeing the boxes for the first time. There was always amazement at the sheer variety of artistic solutions and the creativity and ingenuity they reflect. The accompanying texts illuminated the meaning of the boxes and extended their expressive depth, which visitors often found extremely moving and provocative. People picked their favorite boxes and made their selections a focus of the conversation. The multiple levels at which the small but compelling works creed function sustained repeated visits, each yielding fresh and affecting experiences.

Credit for this extraordinary effort must go promote primarily to Lorraine Serena, who has nurtured it’s growth with a profound personal commitment and the firm belief that such an international art project could make a difference. The hundreds of boxes Lorraine gathered at her studio in Santa Barbara are a tribute to her passion, as well as proof of the powerful forces that are drawn so many women to this unique global enterprise.

At one time we thought that the Women Beyond Borders retrospective exhibition would provide a critical look back—but now it has also become the impetus for continuing the path forward.

Doran H. Ross, Past Director of the Fowler Museum in UCLA, Marla Burns, Executive Director of the Fowler Museum in UCLA and Co-Curator of the Exhibition, Betsy Quick, Director of Education at the Fowler Museum in UCLA, Anette G. Kubitza Ph.D., Art History, Co-Curator of the Exhibition

With its mission to honor and document women’s voices and visions, to build community through dialogue and collaboration, and to inspire all women to express their creativity, Women Beyond Borders as an ongoing project not only raises questions about what art is and who can be considered an artist, it continuously challenges national, political, ethnic, religious, and aesthetic boundaries. – Anette G. Kubitza Ph.D., Art History

A guard at the WBB retrospective at UCSB was so inspired by the exhibition, he felt compelled to write this poem about it:

THE MAGIC BOXES

by Dan David

I made one thousand boxes by pine wood.

A thousand shrines, as nests for grist.

They were so small, you can fill them

with just the water in your fist.

I sent them far away, to see the world

as undressed bridegrooms,

Then Amen!

But, like a wary mother, first of all

I scratched the addresses on their foreheads

to know where to return when

Grownup men

After they scoured the world,

and found their own brides

And their own destinies as well.

In my own box,

picked up at random from the pile,

closed in tight within.

As in the magic, bold, Orpheus’ lyre

I laid my heart,

and alongside, as in Noah’s Ark,

all other parts of a wide-awake soul:

earth, water, air and fire;

to stand against the other Floods

avoiding being drowned by passion or by sadness,

To find each other in a pinch,

in time, beyond time.

Day or night, year by the year,

from neighborhood, from far away,

by airways, brought by winds, by waters’ waves.

or running on the roads,

migrating creatures, faithful sons,

the boxes came then back

at mother’s home.

They came back either sad or happy,

they returned as rich or poor.

Everyone brought with it a life

or two, or even more.

Some are sealed tightly. . . capsules of time,

Others are open, readings for a night.

Today in Santa Barbara it’s raining.

From their windows,

looking toward the world,

Boxes reflect on the pacific waters,

colored with their magic histories:

A gallery of destinies, of women. . .

A rainbow that surrounds the planet,

as an alive, blessed shawl of hope.

And from the pine wood box, one day I sowed

and a large pine forest grew up on the earth.

WBB’s Relevance to Academia

Janna Syvanoja – The Soul of Woman is Round and Cannot Fit into a Metric Box, FINLAND

Women Beyond Borders is about dialogue. It is a gathering together of women so they can identify themselves, which is – speak for themselves. The importance of this action in a global society cannot be underestimated. – Suvan Geer, Artist/Writer Los Angeles Times, Art Week

WBB has been a catalyst for creativity and collaboration in many areas and has been interpreted by a variety of adjunct projects. Presented here are a few examples of how WBB has crossed over to academic disciplines such as psychology, anthropology, sociology, women’s studies, art education, art history, and public practice. Over the years, WBB has been acknowledged by anthropologists, theorists, art historians, curators, artists, and poets.

WBB inspires a variety of pertinent aspects:
• Creative expression
• Multi-Cultural awareness
• Creative thinking
• Dialogue and collaboration
• Engages community
• Perspectives on women worldwide
• Paradigm Shifts
• Challenging assumptions
• Invention
• Risk-taking

Women Beyond Borders has not only had an impact on women, but increasingly with men. WBB is more than “women’s issues” and as the project traveled the world it has affected and informed men and boys. Comments made by different men after viewing the exhibition have ranged from, “I have five sisters and only now am I beginning to understand them” to, “I want to apologize to all women for what men have done to them.”

Former President Bill Clinton and Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres at the Exhibition in Israel

Examples in Relation to Academia

Psychology

For many participants, Women Beyond Borders has been a catalyst to express themselves deeply and truthfully The intimacy of the box providing a place of self-exploration and awareness. Adjunct WBB projects, which focused on healing, included varied participants: troubled teens, Girls Inc., several thousand children with disabilities around the world via VSArts DC, women from the KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Singapore, homeless women in Seattle, chattel in Kenya, aboriginal women in Australia, recovering drug and alcohol addicts in Nashville, survivors of human trafficking in South Vietnam and survivors of the genocide in Rwanda.

SURVIVORS OF THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 2006

This group of boxes is part of 55 boxes that were taken to Kigali, Rwanda by Betsy Kain in collaboration with Solace Ministries in 2006. They were given to widows of the genocide in an effort to help them work through their losses and grief. The transformed boxes and statements reflect the atrocities and immense personal hardship Tutsi women went through, and their attempt to cope with memories of their loved ones being killed in front of their eyes.

Before 1994, our country was good. After April ’94, blood was shed. Many people died and the majority of genocide survivors are struggling for life. So, the telephone you see is calling for help. Inside the box, there is my heart. I will never forget my relatives, my friends, children’s blood… The blue color means that I hope to live happily… – Collette Mukandoli

BUILDING BLOCKS IN VIETNAM 2012

Building Blocks: Life Skills, Art, and Healing was a project spearheaded by Pacific Links Foundation and funded in part by the Consular Club of Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam to support the reintegration process of survivors of human trafficking. The three-day intensive project was held in Mui Ne, a local beach town that allowed the young women from PALS’ Southern shelter to distance themselves from their current environment and gain perspective and reflect.

The Northern shelter residents also participated in a separate session with similar goals. With the goals of self-development, reflection, healing and reintegration, the project focused on helping trafficked returnees rebuild their lives through art. Through creative arts workshops, as well as individual and small group sessions, the project focused on building healthy self-esteem and healthy relationships.

The young girls started off with wooden boards and nails. They worked together to build boxes, paint them, and assemble them into a collaborative mosaic, symbolizing the individuality of each woman and the interconnectedness of their journeys together, to rebuild a new life.

TEEN PROJECT IN LOS ANGELES 2002

This homecoming retrospective explored the global impact of WBB. A selection of boxes from extensive adjunct projects, including the Los Angeles School district and Girls Inc. were represented along with several hundred Women Beyond Borders boxes. Numerous inclusions such as these have also taken place at other exhibitions and presentations around the world. Museums and entire school districts as well as community organizations have participated. Many students used the project as a vessel to express themselves and their own internal struggles through the medium of the boxes.

Michael Cashen – Self Portrait, All I want …, 2002, CULVER CITY, CA, USA

Jennifer Tanaka – Who am I?, 2002, CULVER CITY, CA, USA

Anthropology

Women Beyond Borders is an initiative of planetary dimensions involving varied cultures. Give a little box to an artist in order to free her fantasy and creativity, sparking the desire to meet and dialogue. The vessel is transformed with images, desires, expectations, dreams, and illusions, which represent the spectrum of human experience, love, birth, relationship, courage, violence, power, and death. – Dr. Cecilia Gatto Trocchi, Anthropologist

Hannah Hasiciimbwe – Shades of Africa, 2000, ZAMBIA

Everywhere you go in Africa a woman is always present. Through my presentation, I portray three major roles that make African women so precious in our society. A woman does not only bear a child in her arms, wood on her head, or a clay pot in her hands, she bears the daily burden of African experiences. She is the strength of Africa and I hope that we can learn to appreciate what a woman does and the one who created her. – Hannah Hasiciimbwe

Presentations by Anthropologists:

ITALY: Women Beyond Borders, Presentation by Dr. Cecilia Gatto Trocchi, cultural anthropologist, Gallery Extra Moenia-Art Moderna, Todi (May 1997).

NEPAL: Women Beyond Borders, Teen Dewal Mandir Temple, Presentation/Coordinator, Dr. Michéle Andina, nurse, anthropologist. Pachali, Kathmandu. (March 2 – 20, 1998).

MONTANA: Cross-Cultural Reflections on Art and Healing, Presentation by Kimber Haddix McKay, Professor of Anthropology, University of Montana, Artini: Connections (April 19, 2007).

UTAH: Women Beyond Borders: Multi-Cultural Aspects and History, Presentation and Gallery Walk, Art Access Gallery/VSA Arts Utah, Salt Lake City (Jan. 19, 2002). In conjunction with Women Beyond Borders exhibition at the Cultural Olympiad. (2002).

Sociology

Projects such as WBB cannot solve all social ills, however they can address a few: the satisfaction of self expression, the loneliness of spirit, the despair of exclusion, the universal awareness of our desire for healing, justice, liberation and connection to one another. WBB is a human interaction attempting to move beyond imposed boundaries and to create dialogue and inspire further understandings and collaboration.

Each work is an individual expression, but these works also express what it is to be a woman among women; an Israeli among Israelis; an Argentinean among South Americans. The project is more than a set of isolated works of art: it is about human relations. – Lynn Scarlet, Deputy Secretary US Department of the Interior, Washington DC (2005-2009)

BOXES ON THE TRAIN AUSTRIA TO RUSSIA 1996

The exhibition leaving the train station.

An unprecedented exhibition installed in a Russian sleeper car made its way from Austria to Russia with many obstacles along the route. Coordinators installed the boxes in a rented train car, creating a moveable sculpture in a newly defined open space moving from Graz, to St. Petersburg. In the course of the journey, eight borders were crossed.

For more information on the Russia to Austria Exhibition, see our page HERE.

BOYS AND GIRLS STUDY WOMEN’S ISSUES MONTANA 2007

Over 1,200 fifth graders from Missoula County came to the museum every school day for three months throughout the exhibition to view the boxes and to discuss women’s issues. As each child entered the museum, both boys and girls were given cards with a specific issue relating to women. As they viewed the works, they collected information in reference to their card. Earnest discussions followed giving the students new insights into women. Next, the group viewed the WBB World Tour Journey video and then created their own boxes.

ART EXPRESSING LIFE SEATTLE AND PALO ALTO 2006

Louise Kikuchi – The Encrypted Future, 2006

One of the criteria for selecting the women participating in the exhibition was that their personal stories be inspiring to young girls. In Seattle, adjunct workshops were conducted for GirlsFirst, a leadership program for high school girls of color facing social and economic barriers, and Angeline’s center for homeless women.

DIALOGUE BETWEEN SELF AND COMMUNITY SINGAPORE 2001

Prisca Ko – Constraints Faced by Contemporary Women, 2001, SINGAPORE

The women participants in Singapore created boxes in relation to a community, i.e. a collaboration with family, friends, a group of people, etc. The objective was to discover who women are and what women want in our particular society and context. Women first examined their personal identity and space, and second, related to their experience with the community, be it male or female. The community was engaged in the art-making process, thus extending the collaborative nature of WBB. This process gave rise to a more comprehensive reflection of societal values, needs, wants, and identity as a whole.

WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS: WHAT’S A BOX GOT TO DO WITH IT? REFLECTIONS ON THE BODY 2011

This WBB exhibition, addressing women and their bodies, was in conjunction with a symposium and weeklong program entitled Facing Our Bodies which took place during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week Jan. 31 – March 24, 2011. Organizers were Dennis Downey, Professor of Sociology and Irina Costache, Professor of Art History. As the boxes were opened at the exhibition, pertinent discussions were inspired on this often silent and widespread epidemic. The group of boxes on display focused on issues of the body and female subjectivity from a variety of perspectives. The box, providing an inner space as well as an interface, becomes a metaphor for the body itself in its myriad expressions, and a vehicle for introspection and dialogue

Diana Robson – We Are This And That And Everything In Between 1995, AUSTRALIA

This box contains references to the stereotyping that we as women experience and the title, We are This and That and Everything in Between, refers to the true individual nature of the female sex.

Women’s Studies

It’s utterly prosaic, this box until it falls into the hands of the artists….at which point the box is transformed, exploded, expanded, shattered, sculpted, pasted, painted, and reborn into an expression of a woman’s identity. – Shanti Menon, East Magazine, Singapore

Magda Eunice Sánchez – New Apple, New Manifesto, GUATEMALA

For a long time, the apple has been a metaphor of the female’s voice, of Eve’s voice, the voice that carried Adam to the supposed sin and expulsion from paradise. Woman has endured this sinful story for centuries. The same tale is connected to the traditional story of Pandora’s Box. Pandora’s curiosity leads her to open a box that the gods have forbidden. Her sentence is to find within all the evils of the world. However, in this apple I present a new voice, one of many women who fight for their dignity. It is placed upon a stand and framed as an homage to the women who in the Orient, Africa, Europe, etc. struggle against practices that have put them in positions that are submissive, second class, and at times inhumane. This new apple is a new manifesto, that of the creative woman who has had to fight for her space and had to change old meanings. – Magda Eunice Sánchez

Presentations in Relation to Women’s Studies:

AUSTRIA: Women Beyond Borders, Presentation, Styrian Autumn Festival, Gender & Politics, Forum Stadt Park, Graz (Oct. 2, 1997).

CALIFORNIA: Beyond the Backlash: Feminism for the 1990’s, Panel moderated by Betty Ann Brown, including Dean Dresser, Cheryl Dullabaun, Cheri Gaulke, Sondra Hale, Rosalli Ortega, Sandra Rowe, and Lorraine Serena, UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (June 8, 1996).

CALIFORNIA: Igniting the Edge: Women Beyond Borders, Panel Presentation including Lorraine Serena and WBB artists, National Women’s Caucus for Art and Southern California Women’s Caucus for Art (SCWCA), Los Angeles (Feb. 10, 1999).

AMSTERDAM: Traveling Heritages – New Perspectives on Collecting, Preserving and Sharing Women’s History, Saskia E. Wieringa (ED.), Aksant Academic Publishers, Amsterdam, Women Beyond Borders, pp. 79-82. Essay by Biljana Kasic, 2008

In light of our increasingly multicultural societies and the expanding “digital divide,” we need more inclusive approaches to the collection of cultural heritage. Critical reflection on the contents of collections and methods of acquisition is crucial. The International Information Center and Archives for the Women’s Movement (IIAV) in Amsterdam provides a case study in how to approach these issues. It considered how to make optimal use of new media, and whose histories should be represented in its archives. In Traveling Heritages, international and national heritage experts from academic, libraries, and archival professions reflect upon these concerns offering new perspectives on documenting women’s histories.

Art Education

For more information about our art education curriculum, see our page HERE.

A selection of student projects from around the world:

UTAH: Children Beyond Borders, Adjunct Exhibition, Art Access Gallery/VSA Arts Utah. Inspired by the success of Women Beyond Borders, VSA Arts invited 4,500 children with disabilities from more than 50 countries to transform cardboard boxes. The resulting Children Beyond Borders, a collection of original artwork expressing children’s ideas, dreams and visions, was first exhibited in Salt Lake City (Jan. 18 – March 17, 2002).

AUSTRALIA: Grrrls Beyond Borders, Satellite Exhibition of boxes by 300 female high school students held simultaneously with WBB exhibition at Tin Sheds Gallery. Organized by Michaela James. The Faculty of Architecture, The University of Sydney (Aug. 28 – Sept. 18, 1999).

SWITZERLAND: Pandora’s Box, Workshops for children in conjunction with Pandora – Women in Classical Greece. Organized by Anne Cathy Wildberger, Curator of Education, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig, Basel (May – June, 1996).

Addendum

Women Beyond Borders contains extensive information, including a video archive of 80 DVDs of footage from the world tour. Included are documentation of exhibitions, workshops, presentations, and interviews with curators, artists, and viewers. Archives also include photos, press, ephemera and artist information (resumes, catalogs, images). These videos can be found HERE.

Formosa Tales Exhibition

Taipei

Taiwan
March 7 – March 30, 2021

Christine Wu, Initiated WBB in Taiwan
Rose Huang, Collaborator
La Benida Hui, Collaborator
Roma Mehta, Collaborator

A New Exhibition

A staff wears a face mask with a Taiwanese flag design, as protection due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, at a factory for non woven filter fabric used to make surgical face masks, in Taoyuan, Taiwan, March 30, 2020. REUTERS/Ann Wang

Women Beyond Borders are proud to announce that we have opened a new exhibition in Taiwan in conjunction with Red Room, a community-driven creative arts platform fostering inter-generational, cross-cultural expression. The Exhibition is entitled Formosa Tales and hosts the works of well over 70 artists. The exhibition was opened to the public at the Cloud Forest Gallery 27M in Taipei for International Women’s Day on Monday, March 8th, 2021 and will travel all across the island in the future!

The Following Was Provided by –

Kaya Lemaire

Roma Mehta – Formosa Tales 寶島話匣子 at the Cloud Forest – March 27, 2021, Taiwan

Yes. It was as dreamy as it sounds.

It was cloudy, it was verdant, there were many women (and men!), and artists, amazing food, environmentally-conscious people & practices, and some snazzy latin music.

Let it be known that Red Room knows how to put on a fantastic cultural event.

Nestled in the hills under Yangmingshan, the Cloud Forest Collective has set up a shared art space/gallery next to their pottery studio. It’s a beautiful location, far away from the smelly scooters and honking Hondas.

It’s a space to find peace among artsy individuals and mindful friends. And perhaps make a bowl or two, if it suits you.

The event that took place on March 7th was the opening exhibition of Women Beyond Borders (WBB) Taiwan Chapter, titled Formosa Tales 寶島話匣子. Red Room collaborated with WBB to feature the personal stories of women from a variety of cultural backgrounds, through the physical medium of a box.

WBB is a non-profit, cross-cultural exhibition of women connecting women from all walks of life within and beyond their communities across the globe via a small, wooden box. Women from internationally known artists to women with no prior artistic experience, everywhere from Argentina to Zambia, have transformed these wooden boxes into a repository that contains a story from the artist.

Lorraine Serena is the brains behind WBB, holding the belief that,

“In light of the world situation, we move forward with even greater conviction that women’s voices and visions are a healing force in the world. The arts are a universal and essential language allowing us to look beyond ourselves in order to create a new model of relatedness.”

The women who participated could really do whatever they liked with the box…

… Changing its shape, orientation, color, or texture just to start. What emerged from the boxes were incredible stories of growth, change, heartbreak, tragedy, evolution, power, and more. It was amazing to see how the boundaries of a box could be pushed and stretched.

This is La Benida Hui’s box, broken into balance pieces to create “Her Story, Her Life and Her Lesson”

La Benida Hui

As with all the Red Room events, I have some sense of “coming home”. Growing up in a hippie household in Vancouver primed me for the things that maybe some others would find surprising about this community in Taiwan.

The sharing circles, jam sessions, and long hugs are indicative of the open-heartedness that is fostered between each person. It’s welcoming to people of any shape, size, color, identity, or other definers we humans can come up with. It’s a community that has grown around the arts.

When I walked into the courtyard entryway of Cloud Forest my ears were greeted by the hand pan and laughter echoing through the open gallery space. I was immediately in love with the setup.

The gallery is set in an old heritage building with a bright, open layout with boxes dotting all the surfaces.

A low-lying stone building to the right was where we found the live music, by the band Ambiente Latino, and an AMAZING spread of vegetarian food, drinks, and dessert. I’ve never been so impressed by the catering at a free event. The food was served on Rose’s plant-based plates and bowls (check out her brand Conscious Good Eats on Facebook).

In the beginning, there was a brief talk about the project and some reflections on the planning and execution of such an event. It ain’t easy to pull off this level of awesome.

The women behind the project were Christine Wu, Rose Huang, La Benida Hui, and Roma Mehta, who spent months planning the opening and collecting art projects, setting up and organizing every last detail. And it doesn’t end there.

Formosa Tales 寶島話匣子 is a traveling exhibition that will be moving around the island and showcasing the boxes and stories. Taipei was the first stop on its tour. If you’re interested, keep an eye on Red Room’s page to find out when/where the next exhibition will pop up.

People milled about chatting, laughing and enjoying the space. It was a chill and easy-going atmosphere, which is standard for a Red Room event. My friend Christiaan and I were admiring all the interesting people that passed through, with their feathers and frills and colorful braids.

One thing I love about trying new things is discovering all the different kinds of people that exist outside of your bubble.

Often it feels as though we live inside an echo chamber – hanging out with people who dress like us, think similar things, and hold relatively similar opinions. It’s rare that we go outside and talk to someone who is completely different from ourselves.

I want to make this point because it comes up around the topic of gender and other sensitivities, like race, class, sexual orientation, and so on.

Around the time of women’s day, I attended a few other events and the discussion around gender seemed very “othering”. And by that I mean men were often alienated from the conversation or alternative ideas were shut down.

I think there’s a lack of skill in our society when it comes to having conversations with people you disagree with. It’s incredibly difficult not to get emotions tangled into the narrative, which usually ends up with someone feeling hurt or maybe even an argument.

WBB at Cloud Forest was by far the most relaxing women’s day event I attended this year.

… And maybe we can chalk it up to the lack of a contentious topic being debated. Or maybe there wasn’t any trigger for it.

Or maybe it’s something else. The medium of art and self-expression didn’t overtly start pointing any fingers at anyone about this topic. Rather it was an opportunity for everyone to read and understand some personal struggles or stories.

The boxes didn’t confront anyone with statistics or blame or “call for reform now”. They just sat there wide open for anyone to take a look and take in what they said.

It was an invitation to empathize and relate.

Maybe an invitation is what is needed to initiate change. An invitation to listen. To comfort. To stand in someone else’s shoes for a moment.

There are many people out here pushing the borders towards uncharted territory, and they’re doing it without creating more hurt, harm, or suffering in the world. We sure as heck don’t need any more of that.

Out of the Box Twice Over

The Red Room celebrated International Women’s Day by organizing the 2nd Formosa Tales Box Project with the Namaxia aboriginal tribe in Kaohsiung, a region in southern Taiwan. March 12th to the 13th of 2022 was spent with the Namaxia matriarch and her community along with visits to matriarchs from other tribes in Taiwan. The Namaxia tribe connected with the project, leading to it becoming the impetus to help them revitalize their community. Inspired by the impact of the project, matriarchs from the other tribes are now interested in bringing the project to their own communities. Formosa Tales is alive and well and has taken a life of its own in Taiwan.

SEE BOXES FROM TAIWAN

SWITZERLAND

Antikenmuseum Basel

Basel, Switzerland
April 28 – June 23, 1996

Prof. Dr. Peter Blome, Director
Prof. Dr. Margot Schmidt, Assistant Director
Dr. Barbara Begelsbacher, President Museum Commission
Anne-Kathi Wildberger, Head of Museum Education
Heide Hildebrand, WBB Austrian Curator and Coordinator
Ella Van der Meijden, WBB Swiss Curator and Coordinator
Dr. Sania Papa, WBB Greek Curator and Coordinator
Vera Giesel, Annerose Bekuhrs, WBB German Curators and Coordinators

Pandora, just to set things straight, was the Athenian name for the earth goddess Rhea. The nasty little tale told by Hesiod, the Greek historian, blaming all the world’s follies and ills on a woman who opened up a box of Spites, is “not a genuine myth but an anti-feminist fable, probably of his own invention,” according to mythographer Robert Graves. Pandora’s jar originally contained winged souls.

Well, than the real Pandora is back in action. Because of an idea hatched in Santa Barbara, 200 plus women artists from more than a dozen countries are sending their “winged souls” out into the world in tiny wooden boxes.

– Mary Heebner, Santa Barbara Magazine 1995

Lydia Dambassina – The Last Child, Greece, 1996

Lydia Dambassina – The Last Child – Greece
My work is a continuous relation with movement and time. The spiral is a symbol of life and fertility: the permanence of being under its mobility.

Ellen Wessinhage, Lorraine Serena, Sania Pappa, WBB Greece Curator, Vana Xenou (WBB Artist) at Opening of WBB Basel. — Ellen Wessinhage, Lorraine Serena, Sania Pappa,WBB Greece Curator, Vana Xenou, WBB Artist at Opening of WBB Basel

THE NEED FOR SOLIDARITY

Women Beyond Borders Catalog

Annemarie Monteil, Art Historian

Anne-Kathi Wildberger, Educational Curator and Heide Bilderbrand, WBB Austrian participant had the inspiration of including a segment of WBB along with Pandora, Women in Classical Greece, an exhibition of vessels and objects from 5th Century Greece, organized by Dr. Ellen Reeder of the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Margot Schmidt, assistant director of the Antiken Museum, also wrote of this possibility, “I am looking forward to the realization of this project. If we can join WBB with Pandora in Basel, it would mean that we would link not only women of our time, but we would also link with the ancient Greek women who, at their time, had a strong need for solidarity. Pandora is the first ancient art exhibition in the world to center around women, and provides a groundbreaking perspective into their lives, customs, rituals and myths in an unprecedented gathering works of art from Greece.”

Dr. Sania Papa (Greece), Lorraine Serena, Dr. Margot Schmidt (Switzerland). Ella Van der Meijden (Switzerland), Frank Serena, Vana Xenou (Greece) at opening of WBB Basel. — Dr. Sania Papa (Greece), Lorraine Serena, Dr. Margot Schmidt (Switzerland). Ella Van der Meijden (Switzerland), Frank Serena, Vana Xenou (Greece) at opening of WBB Basel

As these ensembles stream in toward us from so many different places on earth, it is as if they brought to us the essence and spiritual climate of the land and its inhabitants. The voice of the Swiss artists is cooler, more intimate. In Greece one feels in the familiar company of myth. And the Americans radiate self-assurance. Cradle and coffin, boat and garden, altar and shrine expressed by what are at first only anonymous little boxes.

Anne Sauser Hall, Untitled (Pandora), 1996, Switzerland

These happenings out of the lives of women, transformed through pictorial images, have nothing to do with feminine art but rather with the life wisdom of women – birth, death, transformation. With that wisdom, even within the smallest thing can lie the embryo of the great. Whoever finds her own vision as truly as possible has the power to grasp the world in the hollow of her hand.

Read Essay By Sania Papa about Greek Artists participating in this exhibition:

Truthful and Authentic Communication By Sania Papa

BOXES FROM SWITZERLAND

ISRAEL: OUR FIRST INTERNATIONAL EXHIBITION

United States President Bill Clinton and then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel at the Exhibition in Israel

ICC Contemporary Gallery Binyaney Ha’ooma

Jerusalem, Israel
March 13 – April 27, 1996

Edna Ramot, Director
Daphna Naor, Curator and Coordinator
Ravel Pittman and Elena Siff, Contacts

A DEDICATION

The WBB Exhibition in Israel was dedicated to the memory of Ruth Baram, a passionate patron of the arts and a driving force behind reshaping the ICC Jerusalem International Convention Center. Ruth successfully pushed for the open display of art throughout the public building, with the inclusion of local as well as international works. Blessed with the spirit of inquisitiveness, Ruth was constantly in search of the meaning of life through art.

ARTIST NETWORK BEGINS

Daphna Naor

Women Beyond Borders is an expression of the desire to establish a network of female artists who maintain an international dialogue and engage in mutual visits and joint exhibitions and publications. Worldwide parameters of communication have been made possible with the opening of a WBB Internet site.

For the dozens of artists who took up the challenge, the boxes serve as an impetus for a journey into their own inner enchanted worlds to distant temples, longings for a different reality, or expressions of secret hopes. Some artists found in their boxes a means of expressing pain, missed opportunities and despair. Others saw the small boxes as cells of communication through which they shot arrows of humor, optimism and power. Others rebelled against the box, challenging their physical boundaries and went beyond.

Jennifer Bar Lev – Fire – Israel
Fire is an important symbol in the Jewish culture. There are many passages in the Bible condemning pagan ritual sacrifices at altars in the forest, and extolling proper burnt sacrifices to the One God:

“…then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness with burnt offering…” (Psalm LI: 21)

There are many holidays in which fire plays an important part: Lag BaOmer, when bonfires are made as an echo of the signal fires lit against the Romans during the Bar Kochba rebellion; Hannuka, when the miracle of a lamp containing oil enough for a day burned for eight; the tradition of “soul candles,” which burn for 24 hours on the anniversary of the death of a close family member.

But perhaps the most constant and important fire in Judaism is the Sabbath candles, to be lit on Friday eve by every daughter of Israel. I see the Sabbath candles as a symbol of home and the woman’s duty and privilege to protect and care for her family, physically and spiritually.

My piece contains an unlit Sabbath candle to remind myself that no matter how much women expand our potential as human beings, the role of homemaker is a very profound commitment. It provides the foundation of faith upon which miracles can grow.

Historically, a box is a chest for treasures, a memory of a holy place, a womb or a tomb and linked with gift. These connotations are linked with intimate secret objects that create a space for personal meaning, a diary for sharing ideas with oneself, a place for the safekeeping of memories, for preserving culture, a place to hide from others. It can be viewed as a ‘box of secrets’ which brings a woman closer to her soul and, like a mirror, helps to recognize herself and to define her identity.

– Dr. Talya Birkhahn, Israeli Philosopher of Education

Santa Barbara, California artists Lorraine Serena and Elena Siff have initiated an international exhibition of women. They wished to express the recent revolution in women’s art that has taken place in recent decades, at the end of the century, in which women broke through socioeconomic boundaries women’s contribution to art is no longer that of someone sitting on the sidelines, but rather, that of a securely situated, confident individuals whose critique can contribute and enrich the central discussion and execution.

They sent miniature wooden boxes to female artists throughout the world. The boxes were originally intended to serve as channels of inter-cultural communication: it seemed that their uniformity would highlight the differences and diversity.

Among an international spectrum of artists. The dozens of artists who took up the challenge, the boxes served as an impetus for a journey into their own inner enchanted worlds to distant temples, a longing for a different reality, or an expression of secret hopes. Some of the artists found in their boxes a means of expressing pain, as they are “withdrawn” or embody missed opportunities and dispair. Others, however, saw the small boxes as cells of communication through which to shoot arrows of humor, optimism, and power. Some of them rebelled against the box, challenged their physical boundaries, and went beyond them.

– Daphna Naor

SEE BOXES FROM ISRAEL

Museum of Ventura County Exhibition

Museum of Ventura County

Ventura, California
May 3 – July 14, 2019

Elena Brokaw, Executive Director of Museum of Ventura County
Denise Sindlar, Program Director of Museum of Ventura County
Karyl Lynn Burns, Producing Artistic Director of the Rubicon Theatre Company, Event Coordinator
Danielle Morales, Curatorial Assistant of Museum of Ventura County

ANOTHER OPENING OF ANOTHER SHOW

While the Women Beyond Borders Play was still in it’s planning stages, Karyl Lynn Burns, the Producing Artistic Director of the Rubicon Theatre Company raised the idea of a new exhibition that would coincide with the premiere of the play. The idea involved using a small selection of WBB boxes to showcase the history and scope of the organization. This provided more context in conjunction with the stories preformed during the ongoing WBB Play. Before anyone knew it the exhibition was well underway and the boxes were the talk of the town.

Joanne Nguyen, Actor, Jennifer Leigh Warren, Actor, Karyl Lynn Burns, Producing Artistic Director, Zilah Mendoza, Actor

The exhibition would not have been possible without the hard work of Danielle Morales, Curatorial Assistant, Denise Sindlar, Program Director, Elena Brokaw, Executive Director, and everyone else at the Museum of Ventura County.

The actors of the Women Beyond Borders play at the exhibition were inspired by the boxes that they were able to see for the first time in person.

Karyl Lynn Burns and Danielle Morales enjoying the exhibition

A collection of WBB press clippings from all around the world in the exhibition

Jennifer Leigh Warren, Actor, Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, Joanne Nguyen, Actor, and Ulka Simone Mohanty, Actor

Kirby Ward, Education and Outreach Director at the Rubicon, Walt Wood, Acting General Manager at the Rubicon, Frank Serena, WBB Treasurer, and Beverly Ward, Education and Outreach Director at the Rubicon at the exhibition

Zilah Mendoza, Jennifer Leigh Warren, and Ulka Simone Mohanty at the exhibition

NEPAL

Teen Deval Mandir Temple

Pachali, Kathmandu
March 2 – 20, 1998

Michèle Andina, Anthropologist Ph.D., WBB Coordinator

BOXES TAKE A TREK TO NEPAL

Michèle Andina

A selection of WBB boxes was in an exhibition in Kathmandu and also on on a trek, which traveled through native villages in Nepal. The boxes acted as a catalyst to open discussion on reproductive rights and other women’s issues.

Fifty boxes from the Women Beyond Borders exhibit were used as part of an international women’s trek to Nepal in March of 1998. The purpose of the trek was to facilitate communication and understanding between an international group of women and Nepali women by using the boxes as a universal, non-verbal tool for sharing the common visions, hopes and experiences of women throughout the world.

In my work as a nurse-anthropologist I have had many opportunities to meet and work with women and women’s groups throughout the world. Over the years I have attempted to share these profound experiences with my friends. But, I have realized that mere words cannot possibly convey the emotions of meeting with women in their villages and seeing the struggles and joys that they face in their daily lives.

My recent work has focused on the impact that being a member of a women’s group has on women’s lives. As a result of this work we at the Pacific Institute for Women’s Health are advocating women’s organizations as a vehicle for women’s empowerment, in addition to the conventional strategies of primary education and access to economic resources. We feel that women’s organizations should be supported by the international development and donor community as a strategy for empowerment and to enhance the status of women.

Mithileshwar & Sita Kama - Untitled #1, 1998, NEPAL — Mithileshwar & Sita Kama – Untitled #1, 1998, NEPAL

I invited a select group of my friends (approximately 15 from Europe and America, representing six nationalities) to join me on a trek to Nepal in March 1998. We met with local Nepali women’s organizations, both in Kathmandu and during a five day trek. Each day we visited another village and met with local women’s groups. How can we (in spite of our multiple language capacities) communicate with these women? Although we had two educated Nepali women with us, communication, especially personal communication, was not easy. Therefore, my desire to use the exhibit, Women Beyond Borders, as a tool to facilitate communication. The universal language of art and the themes so vividly depicted by the boxes unite women across and beyond borders. The capacity of these boxes to “share the visions, dreams and hopes of women around the world” will enabled us to establish immediate rapport with our hosts.

NEPAL BOXES

MONTANA

Missoula Art Museum

Missoula, Montana
March 12 – June 8, 2007

Laura Millin, Executive Director
Steve Glueckert, Curator
Renee Taaffe, Curator of Education
Meridith Rippey, Missoula Art Museum Visitor Services
Cricket Winfield, Coordinator

Missoula Montana continues to feel the ripple effect of Women Beyond Borders.

– Cricket Wingfield, WBB Coordinator

Over 1,200 fifth graders from Missoula County came to the museum every school day for three months throughout the exhibition to view the boxes and to discuss women’s issues. As the students entered the museum, both boys and girls were given cards with a specific issue relating to women. They viewed the works and collected information in reference to their card. Earnest discussions followed giving the students new insights into women. Next, the group viewed the WBB World Tour video and then created their own boxes.

Thinking INSIDE the box:
Local artists add their voices to world-touring ‘Women Beyond Borders’ exhibit

April 26, 2007
By JOE NICKELL of the Missoulian

The exhibit includes work by women survivors of genocide in Rwanda. The box on the right, titled “Beatrice’s Box – A Coffin” by Beatrice Nicyascra, shows figures representing her four children and a drawing of her husband who was hacked to death while she was forced to witness.

Think you know what a box is? Google offers 44 definitions of the word, drawn from 32 different sources. Yes, a box is “a (usually rectangular) container,” but it is also a “compilation of rare and unreleased tracks by Klinik,” and a “juggling pattern for three objects, most commonly balls or bean bags.” It is a technique of cocktail mixology, a hockey strategy, an area of a craps table, and slang for a tornado watch.

Not one of the definitions dredged up by Google mentions the word “feminine” or “woman.” Yet to more than 900 women in 50 nations around the world, a simple, pine box has become a symbol not only of femininity, but of the cultural concerns, economic challenges and personal struggles that bind all women around the world.

Expressions of that symbolism are currently on display at the Missoula Art Museum as part of an exhibit, titled “Women Beyond Borders.” The traveling exhibit, which has circled the globe over the past 16 years, is the brainchild of Santa Barbara, Calif.-based artist Lorraine Serena, who visited Missoula recently for the show’s local opening.

“The box is a shrine, it’s a vessel, it’s a womb, it’s a tomb,” said Serena in an interview with the Missoulian. “There are so many ideas and concepts familiar to women that attach to the box, even though it’s a rigid object. It has been life-altering and mind-boggling to witness the range of concepts and expressions that women have come up with in response to this simple little box.”

The project traces back to 1991, when Serena and a group of other Santa Barbara artists were trying to dream up an art experiment that could involve women from around the world, something that would address issues of politics, identity and community. They lit upon the idea of the boxes for reasons both practical and metaphorical.

“We were trying to think of something that would be easy to ship around the world, and that would have a lot of symbolism and opportunity for artists to interact with in a meaningful way,” said Serena. “I put some of the found objects from my artwork on a table, which included a small box. We looked down and thought, that’s it, the box.”

The organizers – led by Serena and Elena Siff – launched “Women Beyond Borders” by sending out 200 pine boxes, each measuring just 3 1/2 inches by 2 inches by 2 inches to artists around the world. Initially, they contacted artists with whom they had some degree of connection. But as word of the project spread, requests and contributions came in from unexpected quarters around the globe.

“It spread so fast even with an assistant we could hardly keep up,” said Serena. “It seemed like every day we were getting them submitted, from just everywhere. It was such an unexpected experience of life – I feel it was almost a part of a destiny for me.”

The first exhibit, featuring 185 artistically altered boxes, took place at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum in 1995. Since then, the exhibit has visited 47 locations in 50 different countries. If that math seems backwards, it’s because one of the exhibitions literally traveled, on a train, across eastern Europe.

“This group of women had the idea to hold the exhibition on a train going from Austria to Russia,” explained Serena. “They exhibited it in the berths for people as they traveled. The show went across recently opened borders, carrying the boxes, so they really made the idea interesting.”

The exhibit was part of the 2002 Cultural Olympiad, in coordination with the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. It has also visited a shopping mall in Canada, a temple in Katmandu, airports and the Ontario International Airport near Los Angeles.

“We go where the boxes are wanted,” said Serena. “This is not the kind of thing that is meant to be only for museumgoers.”

It is also not meant only for practitioners of fine art. Many of the contributors to “Women Beyond Borders” are first-time artists; others are professional craftspeople.

“The boxes have come from women who live in very humble places to very elegant places, women who have a lot of creative experience and women who have very little or none at all,” said Serena. “Our goal has always been to honor and document the whole range of women’s voices around the world.”

Kelly Garrett strolls past some of the boxes made by artists from 50 nations at the Missoula Art Museum Tuesday afternoon. The exhibit, “Women Beyond Borders,” has circled the globe over the past 16 years, includes 900 boxes and has recently has grown to feature work from Missoula artists.

SEE MONTANA BOXES

Tajima Collaboration

Palo Alto Art Center

Palo Alto, California
October 10 – 13, 2006

World Trade Center

Seattle, Washington
October, 2006

Elaine Tajima, CEO Tajima Creative LA, Coordinator and Curator
Brad Hennig, Tajima Creative
Kathleen Holliday, Tajima Creative
Kathy Prost, Tajima Creative
Marie Moore, Tajima Creative
Rita Rivest, WBB Contact

ART EXPRESSING LIFE

A COLLABORATION WITH TAJIMA CREATIVE

Stephania Serena, Lorraine Serena, another attendee, and Diep Vuong – President of the Pacific Links Foundation, in Palo Alto

tajima-team-seattle-2 — Kathleen Holliday, Lorraine Serena, Elaine Tajima, Kathy Prost, Rita Rivet, and Marie Moore, in Seattle

Women Beyond Borders, with support from Tajima Creative, presented dynamic exhibitions, highlighting the personal stories of prominent national and regional women in Seattle and Palo Alto. To express these stories in art, the project paired women like California Senator Barbara Boxer, restaurateur and author Alice Waters, Barclays CEO (and former Washington Mutual President) Deanna Oppenheimer and others with established artists working in a range of media. The resulting pieces are both intensely personal and richly intriguing. One of the criteria for selecting the women participating in the exhibition was that their personal stories be inspiring to young girls. In Seattle, adjunct workshops were conducted for GirlsFirst, a leadership program for high school girls of color facing social and economic barriers, and Angeline’s center for homeless women.

Artist: Louise Kiukuchi

Woman: Phyllis Campbell,

President/CEO The Seattle Foundation

The Encrypted Future

Right angles are only made by human beings. And if one thinks of the ultimate object created, one is led to the computer and its binary innards. The dots on the unpainted, rectangular box are like the zeroes and ones used to create software. The disks represent programs which have strategies for solving problems of all dimensions, from local to global levels. The box is about hope in the computer, that it will be able to help humanity.

Artist: Dianna Cohen

Woman: Alice Waters

Owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café

Founder of The Edible Schoolyard Project
Lettuce Revolution

We need a revolution, a delicious revolution, that will induce children – in a pleasurable way to think critically about what they eat.

– Alice Waters

Within the Edible Schoolyard project, Alice is teaching us all by demonstration, that we are what we eat. She creates a sense of community and interconnectedness. These are values that I hold high and attempt to eschew and embody in my work in a more formal way as compositions made up of disparate parts joined together to form whole. This “Lettuce Revolution” box piece for the WBB project attempts to visually embody the ideas of Alice Waters.

– Dianna Cohen

SEE TAJIMA BOXES

TENNESSEE

The Frist Center

Nashville, Tennessee
March 6 – July 20, 2003

Chase Rynd, Executive Director
Mark Scala, Curator
Katie Welborn, Associate Curator
Dr. Pedro and Dr. Priscilla Garcia, Coordinators

THE MUSEUM EXHIBITION

“The works are extraordinary and provocative,” Frist Museum curator Marka Scala said. “Some art is a little bit difficult to connect with, but in this case, the connections are going to be so immediate. This exhibit gives us the opportunity to think about women and girls in Nashville and in a way broader international context.”

Dr. Priscilla Garcia and Dr. Pedro Garcia

The WBB exhibit was introduced to the Frist Museum by Dr. Priscilla Partridge Garcia, a psychologist and professor married to Metro schools Director Pedro Garcia. Dr. Pedro Garcia later introduced the Metro Schools to WBB. The exhibition drew a record 52,000 viewers, the largest turnout to an exhibition in the museum’s history. When asked about the exhibition, its founder Lorraine Serena said that “The collection has sparked the growth of a new community of artists and has become a virtual launchpad from which artists and viewers can progress together with a greater understanding of each other’s struggles and achievements. This community is invaluable because it provides a place in which their voices can be heard. Also, the women feel empowered by the worldwide reception of the art and by the local communities they form. The boxes not only evoke personal, emotional and thoughtful responses from their audiences, but they also convey the beliefs of the individual artists.”

ADJUNCT PROJECTS

The Frist Center for Visual Arts encouraged adjunct projects, including 1,000 teachers and students from the Nashville School District and other various groups. Workshops were held at the Renewal House and Magdalen House, recovery communities for women and their children who are suffering from alcohol, drug abuse, and prostitution. In addition, Nashville’s Rites of Passage, Hermanitas and Girls Scouts expressed their ideas and visions through personal boxes. Watkins College of Art and Design students joined in with their own creations and displaying them at the college gallery.

Metro Art coordinator Carol Crittenden said, “It’s the concept that is so great, having students be honorary women for the day. As much as anything, the thing I like for the young men, is the viewpoint for them to see it from the women’s perspectives. I’m very interested in all of our children seeing literally outside the box of what our lives and lives around the world are like.”

Elizabeth Mask – Ripened Fruit – Tennessee, 2003

Elizabeth Mask – Ripened Fruit – Tennessee, USA
“This world is a tree to which we cling– we, the half-ripe fruit upon it. The immature fruit clings tight to the branch because, not yet ripe, it’s unfit for the palace. When fruits become ripe, sweet, and juicy, then, biting their lips, they loosen their hold. When the mouth has been sweetened by felicity, the kingdom of the world loses its appeal. To be tightly attached to the world is immaturity; as long as you’re an embryo, blood-sipping is your interest.”

– Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

A fascination with seeds, seed pods, fruit of both tree and vine accompanied my own struggle with fertility. What appeared to be fallow in my life gradually evolved into a period of regeneration and rebirth. At present, these familiar forms reflect the renewal of my work and symbolize the opaque and marvelous mystery of the human life. This box is lovingly dedicated to Mary Interlandi: May 20, 1983 – February 10, 2003

LORRAINE AND CHILD VIEWING BOX — Lorraine Serena and WBB student participant

GIRL SCOUTS BEYOND BORDERS

The Frist Center and the Girls Scouts of Cumberland Valley collaborated to extend the Women Beyond Borders exhibition to the Nashville community. Four Girl Scout troops were selected to participate in an outreach program related to the exhibition. Two of the troops, Vine Hill and Magness-Potter Community Centers, were from the Rites of Passage program that provides the Girl Scout experience to girls living in or near public housing developments. The other two troops, McMurray and Glencliff Middle Schools, were Hermanitas troops, in-school programs that match Hispanic girls with bi-lingual adult mentors.

The girls, aged 5 to 13, received identical, miniature wooden boxes (3.5” x 2” x 2”) like those given to the artists in the Women Beyond Borders exhibition. They explored issues relating to their lives, and their boxes were created as statements about themselves. Many girls used their box to tell of their family and cultural background, while others used their box to express things that they loved.

The Women Beyond Borders art project involved women artists around the world in a cross-cultural collaboration honoring creativity and building community through dialogue. The 57 girls from the Nashville Girl Scout troops continued this dialogue through the creation of their boxes.

SEE BOXES FROM TENNESSEE

CULTURAL OLYMPIAD

Art Access Gallery

Salt Lake City, Utah
March 22 – 29, 2002

VSA Arts, Children Beyond Borders
Ruth Lubbers, Executive Director and Curator
Vonnie Wildfoerster, Curator
Julie Newland, Programmer
Stephanie Moore, VSA Arts Artist Services
Contacts: Elena Siff, Sam Erenberg and Frank McEntire

WBB was invited to participate in the 2002 Cultural Olympiad. The exhibition was rated as one of the top five events along with the Pilobolus Dance Theatre and Dale Chihuly. Children Beyond Borders, an adjunct project of the Olympiad, included a selection of boxes from over 6,000 children participants with disabilities around the world. Additionally, adjunct projects in Brigham City created 3,000 boxes for the Paralympics. Special guests included IOC Chairman’s wife, Mrs. Bovijn, and the UN Secretary General’s wife, Mrs. Annan.

LESSONS FROM THE BOXES

Boxes Beyond Borders 2002

Dr. Aden Ross

Thinking outside the box is neither a metaphor nor a joke to the artists in Women Beyond Borders. This astonishing, compressed exhibit, founded by California artists, Lorraine Serena and Elena Siff, has been growing for seven years from its grass roots and now includes hundreds of women artists from all over the globe. While the voices are diverse and the expressions range widely among individuals and artistic genres, the collective visions of women supersede all the boundaries of politics, disability, class or culture. Open these boxes, and you will recognize, in many shapes and colors, your own story.

If some issues could be termed archetypal “women’s” concerns, these boxes beautifully embody them. Many explore the bearing and caring for children, with associated images of wombs, nests, eggs, and private talismans of motherhood. Several pieces imply the violation of women’s deepest inside space, whether through violence or other kinds of abuse, as well as the particular powerlessness many women feel, whether physical or cultural in origin. Further, current neuro-anthropologists argue that many women possess more connections between their brain lobes and, therefore, easily inuit, communicate and cooperate – all “feminine” traits celebrated in these pieces.

An attendee, Julie Newland, Lorraine Serena, and Dawn Simonelli at the exhibition

WHAT IS A BOX?

Music box. Jewel box. Mailbox. Lunch Box. Pill box (both bunker and hat). Box springs. Shadow box. Box step. What is a box, exactly? Because there serve as coffins and cradles, gifts and shrines, torture chambers and treasures, boxes carry as many layers of meaning as they do lessons. In this project, the box is the given, the parameters representing the “rules” or laws with which we are presented and from which we must find or create our own meaning. Our box might be our gender, our socio-economic status, our degree of ability and disability. We can perceive our “givens” as limiting or liberating: the atonalist composer Schoenberg reminded us, “ There are still many beautiful songs to write in C-major.”

Jennifer Barton - House Cleaning, 2001, USA / Utah — Jennifer Barton – House Cleaning, 2001, USA / Utah

IMPORTANCE OF PLACE

To some Utah artists, a box, loosely, is a place. Many of us live in our boxes comfortably, appreciating and intensifying their natural beauty, as Lee Bennion does by painting a magical nightscape on her “Moon Box.” In her characteristic abstract expressionistic style, Lee Deffebach adds a splashes of color to any environment, especially this “found” object. Jennifer Barton creates a tiny mansion and grounds from her box; perched on top is a half-nude ceramic doll with a pincushion and a tutu skirt on which are pinned lines about “cleaning our houses” of useless things but retaining foolish fears. Using imagery from her Corn Stalk Clan, Reyes Madalena celebrates her larger home – the earth, with a circular bowl and tiny figures representing different peoples. Jean Tokuda Irwin’s box tells a different story of place, implied first in her title, “East went West and got lost.” Her delicate collaged pictures of Japanese women and slivers of bamboo suggest a place at once disjointed and emergent, a tiny house of fractional walls and mysterious scrolls whispering of remoteness and strangers, but also of “beating out one’s own exile.”

Jena Tokuda Irwin - East went West and got Lost, 2001, USA / Utah — Jena Tokuda Irwin – East went West and got Lost, 2001, USA / Utah

FAMILY MEMORIES

To both the International and Utah artists, a box represents a repository for family memories and associations. Maureen O’Hare Ure placed two painted eggs insider her box, then crowned it with a fanciful songbird which, like many of her creations, in her words represent “all the assorted family characters and stories filling my head as I paint.” As a new, nursing mother, Heidi Moller Somsen filled her box with tiny plastic dolls and plastered it with nipples from baby bottles, one of the few overtly humorous entries in the exhibit. Carla Jimison turned her box into a house papered with text about heredity, out of which grows a family tree, replete with names ribboning its branches. For Ruby Chacon Hurst, the project became part of her ongoing discovery and celebration of her Indian and Mexican heritages; the miniature portraits of women she painted all over her box, as well as the baby inside, represent part of her ‘personal ceremony for her invisible family.’

Carleen Jimenez - Lift, 2001, USA / Utah — Carleen Jimenez – Lift, 2001, USA / Utah

SPIRITUAL MYSTERIES

Three Utahns focused on the enigmatic qualities of a box, particularly its associations with spiritual mysteries. Pandora, not incidentally, was the Athenian name for the Earth goddess Rhea, who originally released winged souls from her box, not the evils attributed to her in Hesoid’s anti-feminist fable. Using a closely related myth, Janet Shapero evokes the mixture of death and hope in Persephone legend; “ Entombed/ Exhumed” in beautiful wire mesh, Persephone is simultaneously trapped and empowered by her relations to her husband, the god of Hades, and her mother, the goddess of fertility. Trent Alvey, in “Cosmic Blue,” characteristically mixes science with spirituality and art, using blue- the color of argon in neon lights- to suggest the ambient energy around us all. Blue also united with tantric symbols for the throat chakra and Trent’s own poem, which encourages women to speak out for what they believe. Carleen Jimenez tucked a red fabric slit into the white folds inside her box, then attached moveable wings to suggest simultaneously both sacred and sexual flight. The artist’s epigraph cautions, “When the secret mirror first opened, she was obliged to recognize the elaborate and multiform disguises behind which oneness lies.” This implies that, whether we join Saint Teresa in mystical ecstasy or simply put on our power suit for the day, we should remember the Platonic reality at the center of ourselves.

IDENTITY

V. Kim Martinez - Core Sample, 2001, USA / Utah — V. Kim Martinez – Core Sample, 2001, USA / Utah

Whatever we suspect lies behind our disguises, we nonetheless continue to conceal or protect our innermost selves. Martha Klein played on “box” as the slang term for the woman’s most private parts, filling it with red sumac berries to symbolize a woman’s eggs, creating an “Ovarian Matrix” with threads from her weaver’s craft. Having worked with incarcerated populations, V. Kim Martinez portrays life as a box within another box of bars shaped like an animal trap. There is no escape from social structures or constant surveillance, and the only “view” is of a “core sample” of paint scrapings from her palette. In a lighter vein, Jacqui Biggs Larsen deconstructed her box and loosely reconnected the pieces to form a woman over whose heart she painted a question mark. While the piece is reminiscent as an unfolding child’s toy, in Larsen’s words, it illustrates “the dichotomy between the posed image of an individual and that individual’s inner life.” Sue Cotter locates a woman’s privacy inside her head. Her wild-haired box has a spooling tongue of flesh-colored, hand-made paper spilling Muriel Rukeyser’s lines: “What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.”

PERSONAL THEMES

As one would expect, private imagery predominates in some pieces, adding to the intrinsic mystery of any box. “Come Home” is covered with photographs Cary Stevens Jones took on one of her last car trips before she dies after a prolonged battle with cancer. The lid is propped permanently open to allow others to come

wilson-blanche-p-tell-me-show-me-usa-utah-main-image-silo — Blanche P. Wilson, Tell Me Show Me, 2001, USA/ Utah

with her, as indeed, we will. Silvia Lis Davis chopped up her box and mixed it with wood scraps from other sculptures to laminate a cat’s head, sleepy and enigmatic as only a calico wood cat can be. Blanche Wilson flattened her box and carved it into a woodblock plate to print a hand holding a smaller one, set against a globe and bookshelves in the background. As a teacher of children who are blind, she feels that “women have always been teachers of those who are in the dark.” Of the Utah boxes, perhaps Bonnie Sucec’s is the most enigmatic. Her box is a magician’s stage prop, decorated in pink and bloody Victorian taste; the victim, represented by a little black bird, waits to be chopped in two. Bonnie’s title ominously suggests the predicament of far too many women: She didn’t put her knives away correctly.”

THE VIEWER’S BOX

Frank McEntire – Reliquary for a Magic Rock, 2002, USA / Utah

This exhibit elicits from its viewers a new response in new shapes. For me, as a writer, it inspired my stacking words into a different confinement and, thereby, discovering a different liberation:

What, precisely, is a box? What are its Platonic locks In wire, wood, words, flesh, in thought, or a relationship?

Who decides its right height, How fat its legs, its weight? Who Dictates to you?

What is your box? What does it mean to be a “woman”? What are your “borders”? These pieces answer with anger and beauty, fear and nostalgia and hope. For some, being a woman means feeling confined, literally or metaphorically, within borders of her own and someone else’s creation. Others defy any borders-physical mental, spiritual, or political. Even with their “given” box, all of these artists certainly ignore conceptual borders, whether they decorate their prison or blow it apart. The depth of vision and power of these tiny boxes belie their size, just like women everywhere- and just like art.

SEE BOXES FROM UTAH

SEE CHILDREN BEYOND BORDERS PAGE

SEE A SELECTION OF PRESS PAGE

RIDGECREST

Maturango Museum

Ridgecrest, CA
September 1 – October 13, 2004

Barbara Andolsek – Dreams Fly, California, USA 2004

Barbara Andolsek – Dreams Fly – California, USA
Inside this box, within a bird, a dream is sealed.

Please PICK-UP and hold this wise, matriarchal creature. Shake her gently and listen. Hear her dream stir? What is within her; within you? Permit your vision to awaken emboldened, released with wings spread and soar beyond every limitation that you impress upon yourself.

Goethe said, “Whatever you do, or dream you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” Truly, all women have dreams and passions pleading to be set free on the wings of imaginary flight.

Kelley Serena, Hearth, USA – California, 1999

Kelley Serena – Hearth – California, USA
Diverse meanings are attached to the shape of a box. This particular box represents the amalgam of two ideas. The first is the idea that all our judgments and ill-imagined, preconceived notions might go up in flames so that we might remember to view each other with fresh, clear perspective.

The other idea is that each of us would throw our boxes of hope and treasure onto the pyre for warmth of body and food on a cold night. This flame of necessity, real for some, but taken for granted by others, might illumine a way of looking at life – that we might value the bare essentials of life more than we do – and care for those who don’t have them.

The green flame represents the possibility for growth and a new way of life that would rise from the kindling of excess with unsurpassed brilliance.

Betty Spindler – Woman Thinking Outside the Box , USA – California, 2004

SEE RIDGECREST BOXES

CHILDREN BEYOND BORDERS

VSA ARTS

Salt Lake City, Utah
January 18 – March 17, 2002

Ruth Lubbers, Executive Director and Curator
Vonnie Wildfoerster, Curator
Julie Newland, Programming
Stephanie Moore, VSA Arts Artist Services

VSA arts first displayed the original 52-box exhibit during the 2002 Olympic games and Cultural Olympiad held in Salt Lake City. VSA Arts invited students with disabilities from all countries to express their own personal ideas, dreams, visions and unique situation by reconfiguring identical boxes into original works of art. Over 6,000 Children were encouraged to use the boxes to create statements about their lives and the places where they live. The resulting Children Beyond Borders Exhibition of boxes from over 83 nations and 45 states embraces our differences and highlights the unbound possibilities of children’s creativity.

Special guests, IOC Chairman’s wife, Mrs. Annan, and the UN Secretary General’s wife, Mrs. Bovijn visited the exhibition. WBB was selected as one of the top 5 events of the Cultural Olympiad this year.

My box creation reflects my passion for abstract shapes and patterns. I love to arrange elements in horizontal lines and use strong, vibrant colors.

Kevin Williams – Untitled, Washington D.C.

Art is a personal expression of each child’s ideas, dreams, visions and unique situations. VSA arts celebrates the artistic expression of young artists with disabilities by joining the efforts of the Olympic Winter Games of 2002 held in Salt Lake City, Utah. VSA arts promotes arts opportunities as a place for children with disabilities to experience the esteem of self-accomplishment and build self-confidence.

A postcard from the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics

The imagination of a child is capable of spanning any border, whether political, radical, religious, physical or mental. Since its founding in 1974, VSA arts has been recognized by the United States Congress as a Program of National Significance for Arts in Education.

One California student changed the box into a grand piano and wrote “I have a piano at home. Mom wants me to play. I go to my teacher Carol’s house and practice. I like my piano teacher. I feel happy when I play.” Another work, created by a student from Utah, features a bright green dragon rising from the box which is decorated with brightly colored bees (a symbol of Utah) and is entitled Flying Peace.

The Boxes Beyond Borders event catalog featuring Children Beyond Borders

VSA arts was founded in 1974 by Jean Kennedy Smith as an affiliate of The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and led by Interim CEO Deborah Stuart, VSA arts is an International organization that creates learning opportunities through the arts for people with disabilities. The organization offers arts-based programs in creative writing, dance, drama, music and the visual arts implemented primarily through our vast affiliate network in 41 states and the District of Columbia and 86 international affiliates in 83 countries. VSA arts programs now serve 4.3 million Americans and 1.3 million people in other parts of the world.

SEE CULTURAL OLYMPIAD PAGE

SEE CHILDREN BEYOND BORDERS BOXES

SINGAPORE

Sculpture Square

Singapore
March 8 – May 13, 2001

Edmund Cheng, Founder and Director
Patricia Chen, Founding General Manager
Joyce Fan, Assistant Curator
Susie Wong, Assistant Curator, Singapore Art Museum
Michèle Andina, Anthropologist Ph.D., Contact and WBB Coordinator

ko-prisca-constraints-faced-by-contemporary-women-2001-singapore-silo — Prisca Ko – Constraints Faced by Contemporary Women, Singapore, 2001

Prisca Ko – Constraints Faced by Contemporary Women – 2001, Singapore

This work seeks to explore and express the constraints faced by contemporary women who live in public housing apartments, also known as Housing Development Board (HDB) flats in Singapore. About 86% of Singaporeans are housed in these HDB flats. Like the vast majority, I, too live in a HDB flat and one of the personal constraints that I face is the lack of physical space. This inspires me to conceptualize the given wooden box as a block of HDB flats with many dwellers within. Each of the niches in the box represents a female dweller.

The different constraints faced, ranging from physical, emotional, mental, and social to religious realms, are reflected in the interior decoration of the units and the contents of the vials. Women from different phases in life; teenagers, singles, married with and without children, and retirees, were invited to participate in a survey, and their views are expressed collaboratively in this box.

Regina Law – Family Bed – 2001, Singapore

I’m three years old. I made a five-decker bed because I want my family to be together. My papa works in Jakarta four days a week and I miss him. I also love double-decker beds but papa said it is too dangerous for children my age. A five-decker bed will be nice–everybody can sleep together and Babybathtub (my doll) can have her own bed. I wanted to have a five-decker bed and mama helped me saw the box. Papa is very old, his bed has many beads–my hands get tired and Nadene che che helped me with the sticking. My bed has three beads because I am three years old and Babybathtub is only two.

WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS: SINGAPORE STYLE

Curator Joyce Fan, Lorraine Serena, and Curator Suzi Wong

When Women Beyond Borders was shown in Singapore in 2001, the curators Joyce Fan and Susie Wong invited local artists to submit boxes that would interrogate individual identity in relation to a specific community – from as small as the family unit to as wide as the world. In response, several artists explored their experiences as a member of one of the many expatriate or minority sub-communities living in Singapore. Others reflected on the identity of women in contemporary society at large. One box by Prisca Ko was a collaborative box with 40 women, which reveals the constraints faced by women living in Block Housing. Another box depicted the mending of a mother and daughter relationship using a crochet needle and gold thread. The objective was to discover who women are and what women want in our particular society. We directed women artists into first, self-examining their identity and space, and second, in the course of this journey, relating that to their experience with the community.

A blind woman examining one of the boxes from the collection

The WBB Exhibition in Singapore was held at Sculpture Square with an overflow of 125 new boxes. The Singapore exhibition consisted of three sections: a Curated Section featuring invited women artists, a Women’s Communities Section with participation from KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), the University Women’s Association of Singapore (UWAS) and the Singapore Council of Women Organization (SCWO) and an Open Section which feature creations by women from all walks of life. These boxes were shown alongside the WBB collection of international boxes. The first lady of Singapore, Madame Goh Chok Tong, was Guest-of-Honor.

Susie Wong, Curator, Elena Lui, UWAS, Patricia Chen-Law, General Manager of Sculpture Square, Lorraine Serena, WBB Founder, and Mrs. Goh Chok Tong, First Lady of Singapore

It’s utterly prosaic, this box, until it falls into the hands of the artists… at which point the box is transformed, exploded, expanded, shattered, sculpted, pasted, painted, and reborn into an expression of a woman’s identity.

– Shanti Menon, East Magazine, Singapore

Suzanne Victor – Untitled, Singapore, 2001

Suzanne Victor – Untitled – 2001, Singapore

I find this concept very challenging although of course initially, I found the concept of Women Beyond Borders and the form (BOX) contradictory, as boxes inherently are about discreet entities/objects with their own definite boundaries, surfaces and edges etc. And these boundaries are walls in themselves, not just an imaginary line or flat paths on the soil dividing countries nor printed lines on the map. In other words, the whole notion of borders and liberating women from it contradicts the very form of the box given to every participant that say so disturbingly otherwise. My intention for the approach to producing a work for this project is to deal with this collision of concept and form. I have gathered a few women and men from the community I am with, to witness a cremation of this box, after which the ashes would be placed in a custom made replica of the box but it will be in cut glass. Death to borders–of course the glass box and its glass walls is practically a vitrine – to enshrine the diminishing of all borders that divide us.

SEE SINGAPORE ESSAYS

SEE BOXES FROM SINGAPORE

What’s a Box Got to Do with it? Reflections on the Body…

Broome Gallery, California State University, Channel Islands

Camarillo, California
January 31 – March 25, 2011

Dr. Anette Kubitza, Curator
Lorraine Serena, Curator

The group of boxes selected for this exhibition focuses on issues of subjectivity and the body from a variety of perspectives. The box, providing an inner space as well as an interface to the world, becomes a metaphor for the body itself in its myriad expressions by hundreds of women. It has provided a vehicle for introspection as well as dialogue, reflecting the personal feelings and realities of women across the world.

– Dr. Anette Kubitza, Art Historian

This WBB exhibition, addressing women and their bodies, was shown in conjunction with an interdisciplinary symposium and weeklong program entitled Facing Our Bodies which took place during National Eating Disorder Awareness Week (January 31 – March 24, 2011). Organizers were Dennis Downey, Professor of Sociology and Irina Costache, Professor of Art History. Dr. Justine Reel, a University of Utah professor and specialist in eating disorders and body image delivered a keynote speech. The exhibit featured a selection of approximately 80 boxes from the “Women Beyond Borders” collection. Co-curated by Anette Kubitza, Ph.D. an Art lecturer at CSUCI, and artist Lorraine Serena, founder and artistic director of Women Beyond Borders.

SEE BODY IMAGE BOXES

VIDEO: CSUCI Exhibition

WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS: What’s a box got to do with it? Reflections on the Body…

California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI)
January 31-March 25, 2011
Camarillo, California

See CSUCI Journal

AUSTRALIA

TIN SHEDS GALLERY, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

August 27 – September 19, 1999
Sydney, Australia

Jan Fieldsend, Director and Curator
Nazanin Marashian, Wbb PROJECT Coordinator

MANLY ART GALLERY & MUSEUM

September 22 – October 17, 1999
Manly, Australia

Therese Kenyon, Director and Curator
Samantha Tunbridge, Assistant

BROKEN HILL ART GALLERY

September 30 – October 17, 1999
Broken Hill, Australia

Diana Robson, Director and Curator

IN THE OUTBACK

In a town as isolated as Broken Hill, the idea of ‘community’ takes on added meaning. With the isolation comes a feeling of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ there are those who are from here, everyone else is ‘from away.’

Is it possible to feel a sense of community with a group of women, most of whom I will never speak to, nor even meet?

It is four years since about two hundred other women and myself were each given a small wooden box and instructions to transform the box in any way we so desired. I have never been to Finland, Cuba or Japan. I do not know what these people look like, I know nothing of their history, however in the creation of their boxes something personal has been revealed, something intimate has been shared.

To others this may seem a very tenuous connection on which to base a sense of community, however to me it is powerfully real.

– Diana Robson

Ironically, rather than dealing with ‘the individual’, Western society tends to place us in particular categories (little boxes) and more specifically opposing polarities in order to deal with us more easily, more quickly, less personally. This easy stereotyping is even more prevalent in regard to the position of women: Madonna/Whore, Mother/Worker, Young/Old, Beautiful/Ugly, Nature/Culture. This box contains references to the stereotyping that we as women experience and the title, We are This and That and Everything in Between, refers to the true individual nature of the female sex.

– Diana Robson

Diana Robson, Director of the Broken Hill Art Gallery

Therese Kenyon, Director of the Manly Art Gallery

Jan Fieldsend, Director of the Tin Sheds Gallery

Student Boxes from Stella Maris College in Manly, Australia

STUDENTS BEYOND BORDERS: ADJUNCT PROJECT

Nazanin Marashian from the University of Sydney invited a group of university women to participate in the WBB exhibition and assist in the preparations of the WBB exhibition at the Tin Sheds Gallery, University of Sydney in 1999.

As part of the expansive opportunities that WBB ignites, the 12 University of Sydney artists have joined to form the Wbb PROJECT. The Wbb PROJECT is an exciting supplement to the Australian tour of Women Beyond Borders, with the generous support of the Tin Sheds Gallery, the University of Sydney Union Cultural Grant Scheme and FASOC, they have been able to develop a working relationship with WBB and become part of an international women’s art event. The aims of the Wbb PROJECT are to recreate the sense of community and dialogue that WBB has illuminated since its first exhibition, this time on a local level.

The Wbb PROJECT is structured as a mini-curatorial endeavor, an exhibition within an exhibition, running for approximately six weeks. An artist’s space at the Tin Sheds studios was established with weekly meetings of creative production and dialogue.

During its run, the Wbb PROJECT produced an art catalog, a series of t-shirts, and a website, all in service of expanding the voices of women in their community. The ambitions, talents, and support of everyone involved have been a true inspiration, giving all who come in contact with this extraordinary exhibition the motivation to keep extending the borders until they finally disappear.

Nazanin Marashian (Right) and her friend Lucy Wayland (Left) were instrumental in the success of the WBB PROJECT

GESTURING A PLACE

Nazanin Marashian, Student, University of Sydney – AUSTRALIA

On my 7th birthday my mother gave me a box. A magical, mystical box. The kind that captures a child’s imagination. Inside, was a ballerina wearing a red tutu. She danced to an indiscriminate song and as she twirled, dreams, blanketing consciousness, soothed the child to sleep.

I filled the box over the years with my most precious possessions. A blue and white beaded necklace, sent from Iran by my Grandmother. A pebble, which, once held in my hand made me invincible. My first watch. A gold ring. A rose. It became for me a private house– a secret site of childhood fantasy and pleasure. Since then I’ve collected numerous other “boxes”: a tool box, a letter box, an artist’s box….all carrying something of the past and the present. Containers of memories which fuse together to define who I am, or who I attempt to be.

Twelve years later, on my sister’s 7th birthday I gave her my magic box, enchanted with secret dreams of yesteryear, to share with her not only my object fetish but also, to inspire her own imagination. The box became a sacred rite, a passage of symbolic connection between two sisters– two women.

We all create or are given “boxes”, real or metaphorical. These boxes are endowed with an alluring mystery– a whispered game of desires, ambitions, fears. Yet, they are at the same time, an ambivalent object which define boundaries. A closed space, a private space, a space which can expand your mind, or suffocate your soul.

Investigating the “boundary” is at the heart of Women Beyond Borders.

The box can be understood in all languages and points of reference. It is a thing which stands as a representative of a common link– that we as women, as living beings need to speak of the whole of our experience: the hostility, the sadness as well as the joys and triumphs.

The WBB exhibition brings that reality to fruition both in its boxes and through its travels.

The opportunities this exhibition has offered throughout its five year existence, whilst acting as an agent for the ideas and feelings of women, has encouraged and inspired creativity and above all communication. Communication both cross-culturally and trans-globally. In Russia the boxes traveled on a train from Graz to St. Petersburg, a moving sculpture, which literally crossed eight borders. The event was filmed and aired live via the Internet at the Austrian and American WBB exhibition venues. In Kenya, WBB acted as catalyst for further women’s art exhibitions. In Nepal a doctor carried the boxes into remote villages where they were shown to local women, as a means of raising awareness of health issues. There have been numerous workshops, and supplementary web sites, designed to showcase artists who utilize digital media and to promote education in digital arts for women.

Change develops out of knowledge. Making visible the spectrum of experiences, both on a personal and global scale is the power and appeal of WBB. Whatever the individual boxes speak of, whether it be personal stories, political issues, or formal concepts, it is in the space of the exhibition that the communication and debate comes alive; and via this spark moves beyond the walls and into the world. Private spaces made public.

Like my magical, mystical box, the Women Beyond Borders project gestures a place for the imagination. As a meeting of strangers and friends across seas, cultures, and languages, the exhibition becomes a universal sign of community; the passing on of ourselves through the gift of a box.

SEE BOXES FROM AUSTRALIA

JAPAN

Women Taiko Drummers at the Akino Fuku Ceremonial Opening — Women Taiko drummers at the Akino Fuku ceremonial opening

Akino Fuku Museum

Tenyru, Japan
April 17 – May 30, 1999

Tamotsu Asano, Director of the Akino Fuku Museum
Yoshihiro Ikka, Curator of the Akino Fuku Museum
Shoko Toma, Independant Curator, Coordinator
Lesley Tannahill and Toshiyasu Ohi, Contacts

Gallery One, Park Tower

Tokyo, Japan
June 4 – 27, 1999

Nobuhiro Sato, Artistic Director
Shoko Toma, Independent Curator and Coordinator

THE FORTRESS MUSEUM

The Women Beyond Borders exhibition at the Akino Fuku Museum opened in Tenryu on April 16th with a fanfare of women Taiko drummers resounding an ancient and powerful cadence amidst cedar forests and blue skies above the Tenryu river. The fortress-like museum offered a powerful backdrop for the boxes from around the world. In addition to the permanent exhibition of works by the master artist Akino Fuku, several special and planned exhibitions are held at the museum throughout the year. For more information about the Akino Fuku Museum, click here.

Shoko Toma, Lorraine Serena, and Yoshihiro Ikka Use — Shoko Toma, Lorraine Serena, and Yoshihiro Ikka

At the opening, we met Japanese participants and Yony Waite, WBB artist, and curator from Kenya. The Mayor of Tenryu, the Director of Education, Director of the Akino Fuku Museum, and many other dignitaries gave formal speeches, which embraced a depth of understanding and appreciation of WBB and beyond to the power of the mythical significance of the box in a land which comprehends and reveres such things in daily life.

Artists, officials, men and women from the nearby towns gathered after the opening at a lakeside Ryokan for a traditional banquet of delicacies, joyful conversation, more speeches, rituals and singing into the night led by Yoni Waite. Yoni surprisingly spent many years in Japan and spoke the language fluently!

A PIECE OF A SMALL WOODEN BOX

Women Beyond Borders Japan Catalog

Yoshihiro Ikka, Curator of the Akino Fuku Museum – JAPAN

On this occasion of the opening of the Women Beyond Borders Exhibition, I would like to share some of my thoughts with you. First, I heard that the women of the world had joined hands and created artistic works using small wooden boxes and that an exhibition of these works was on tour throughout the world. Tenryu is a sylvan city and has declared itself a city of trees. This city has a museum of the arts which has a permanent exhibition of the works of a famous Japanese woman artist, Akino Fuku. Thus, the city was ideally suited to hold such an exhibition. The museum has become known to a certain degree as a museum specializing in Japanese style art. However, I feel it is the work of the museum to help develop an appreciation of all kinds of art, widely defined. Therefore, I would like to see the museum hold exhibitions of Japanese art, oil paintings, contemporary art and other styles of art as well. However, I wondered whether a small art museum in a regional area could successfully generate a wide acceptance and understanding of contemporary art such as the WBB exhibition.

The opening ceremony of the Akino Fuku WBB Exhibition

As the opening of the exhibit approached, my worries on this point grew. I wondered why it had to be an exhibition involving only the works of women artists. Why couldn’t it be an exhibition of the works of both male and female artists, I wondered. At that point, I decided that it was time to study the situation more closely. Thus, early this year, I went to the United States with Ms. Shoko Toma (the Japanese Representative for the Women Beyond Borders Exhibition) to visit Lorraine Serena in Santa Barbara, California.

During our visit, her atelier was filled with women who supported WBB. It was as if a great female power was focused on that peaceful town and I was stunned by the way they collaborated to support the project and make it a success. Behind the scenes, their friends and family members were supporting them, in spirit and effort, a scene which moved me.

As the exhibition went around from country to country, there was a very strong response. For example, in countries such as Russia, Kenya, and Mexico, the status of women is still very limited thus, the exhibition provided an opportunity for voices to be raised for increasing the sensitivities of all regarding these problems which, when I hear about them, have a powerful emotional effect.

Supporting such an extensive exhibition of female artists’ creations is a way of expressing hope that we will have a peaceful world in the years to come. These were the thoughts that I brought back with me.

PARK TOWER TOKYO

The Women Beyond Borders Exhibition was created by Lorraine Serena, an American artist from California, and her associates. The project has in turn, caused more and more women artists to contribute their work to the exhibition. The exhibition here in Japan consists of 200 of these works. I think you will agree with the others who have seen the exhibition and were thrilled by the wonderful individuality of the various works and their artistic expression. I believe that these unique works will speak to you about the hopes of all, both men and women, the young and old, and all races for not only a 21st century without war, but continued peace in the coming millenniums. I am sure that this is the hope of all women everywhere. Let us also hope that this exhibition will lead to additional opportunities throughout Japan, and all the countries of the world, to communicate and express our humanity.

– Shoko Toma, Independant Curator

Shoko Toma, Independent Curator and Coordinator (second from right), with the Tokyo Urban Gas and Development sponsors of the Park Tower exhibition

SEE BOXES FROM JAPAN

MEXICO

Contemporary Art Museum

Oaxaca, Mexico
October 17 – December 4, 1998

Fernando Solana, Director
Mari M. de Olguin, Coordinator, La Casa de Mujer
Shirley Chernitsky, Curator
Cynthia Martinez, Curator
Rowena Galavitz, Curator
Justina Fuentes, Coordinator
Mary Heebner, Contact

Crispina Navarro, Lorraine Serena, and Margarita Navarro

The success of WBB in Oaxaca has been wonderful, every time I pass the museum it is jammed with people visiting the exhibition.

– Mari M. de Olguin

The Women Beyond Borders exhibition in Mexico brought together artists from different socio-economic classes for the first time. Women from small villages in Mexico who work in crafts and don’t normally see themselves as artists came together with prominent artists from the big cities. After the great success of the exhibition, the director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Oaxaca decided to start collecting women’s art at the museum. Margarita Dalton, a Mexican poet and anthropologist wrote the statement below for the exhibition.

AN EFFORT OF PEACE AND HARMONY

Oaxaca Museum of Contemporary Art

Margarita Dalton Palamo Ph.D., Anthropologist – MEXICO

Women Beyond Borders tells much more about the human condition than all of the peace agreements that have been signed in the world today.

Crispina Navarro, WBB artist weaving at her studio

Women Beyond Borders comes forth as a flame that ignites the mountain. The artists started working knowing beforehand that their work would travel around the world. Therefore we find extraordinary labor of hundreds of women joining their wills to discover something that we all have in common; the desire to express deep feelings through art.

Liliana Ribeiro Andrade- Nostalgia Box, 1995, MEXICO

The women artists have united themselves to declare with their art, with their sensibility, and creativity, that they share a common universe. They participate in a planet that expands and joins us as sisters and brothers beyond the borders of political differences, religious ideologies, and aesthetics. Beyond everything, there are similarities in all human beings. There is a humanist dimension without borders.

Women Beyond Borders is an effort for the peace and harmony that must prevail in the world. An effort that synthesizes the desire to unite and to combat the real enemies of all women: hunger, sickness, injustice, inequality and pain in all their representations.

Rowena Galavitz, Posibilidades, 1995, MEXICO

The will that moves mountains has become a reality, “The dream of a common language”, as Adrienne Rich stated. The language of art in these boxes expresses the feelings of each woman who participated in the exposition and as a whole is the expression of millions of women in their daily reality. Women Beyond Borders tells much more about the human condition than all of the peace agreements that have been signed in the world today.

SEE BOXES FROM MEXICO

CANADA

Dufferin North Gallery

Toronto, Canada
June 10 – July 12, 1998

Linda Abrahams, Curator and Co-director Women’s Art Resource Center
Kate Brown, WBB Artist and Coordinator
Fay Cromwell, Co-director Women’s Art Resource Center
Mary Thorn, Dufferin Mall Management
Evangeline Wong, Coordinator of Visual Arts Toronto School District

VISUAL ART AS AMBASSADOR

Linda Abrahams

Ever since pictorial records were etched on ancient cave walls, visual art as communicator and ambassador has remained as constant as the human urge to seek ways of knowing. As we now approach the millennium, the exhibition Women Beyond Borders stirs an evocative reconsideration of that time-honored feminist adage: the personal is political. This exhibition expresses tangibly how what we share in common and what we need for a sustaining diversity can coalesce in a natural state of fullness.

Traveling from a temple in Nepal to a gallery at the Dufferin Mall in Toronto, WBB fully lived up to its vision. Such unique exhibition sites reached out to develop a new relationship between the artist and the viewer and included many who would not otherwise have visited a traditional cultural institution. Another important component of the Canadian exhibition involved hundreds of students from across the city of Toronto visiting the gallery to create their own works of art in the form of miniature boxes. As a result, in the true spirit of WBB, Students Beyond Borders came into being. Looking beyond borders, we can see how one thing leads to another.

Shirley Brown – Two Virgins, 1998, Canada

Canada’s own multi-cultural contribution to WBB aptly reflects the rich diversity of contemporary Canadian art practice. Our participating artists explored beyond the borders of time and place, with each unique box creating a link along a continuum that extended from exploring ancestral roots to empowering us conceptually to imagine what we don’t yet know.

The nineteen participating artists curated from across Canada include Shirley Bear and Rebecca Baird who celebrated their aboriginal heritage, with Baird examining the complexity of one’s cultural memory and Shirley Bear contemplating the potent relationship between aboriginal spirituality and healing.

Works by both Winsom and Buseje Bailey reflect their African heritage. Ancestral spiritual tradition informs and transforms to become the signature of what is contemporary for Winsom, while Bailey inscribes a historical tracing of her personal/political process of empowerment.

Reni Packer, as an artist of dual citizenship, probes the role of icons of national identity in the context of cultural displacement and assimilation. The buoyant energy and sharp wit of artist Kristine Erglis engages the viewer to break through prescribed barriers and stereotypical perceptions of disabilities. Artist Catherine Widgery reflects upon her sense of ecology, her box now depicting an environmental locus of rootedness. In Linda Edward‘s contribution, the viewer is poignantly invited to share the personal. The artist’s breast tissue, encapsulated, arrests our attention to provoke thoughtful consideration of the condition of women’s health.

img0043_2 — Jan Swinburne, Winsom, and Linda Abrahams enjoying the collection

Both Nancy Paterson and Sandy Smirle‘s tribute to technology examine the relationship between sensory intuition and mechanical manipulation. Paterson chooses to put a lid on technology, literally nailing it shut to lock down the computer chip, while Smirle chooses to keep the human touch, via a light switch, connected to the bright ideas of science. In artist Kate Brown‘s conceptual framework, boundaries become mutable, as elemental essences give way to imaginable form.

All of these artists, along with their many WBB Canada and worldwide colleagues, shared a distinguished consciousness of community, creating the genesis of a global consciousness that borders with all their powers can no longer keep contained. The exhibition WBB invites the viewer to imagine.

WBB celebration dinner after the opening in Toronto

SEE BOXES FROM CANADA

CUBA

Wifredo Lam Center

Havana, Cuba
August 7 – September 4, 1998

Llilian Llanes, Director
Magda Gonzalez, Co-director and Curator
Eugenio Valdez, Curator
Elisse Pogofsky-Harris, Contact

BEYOND THE BLOCKADE

Magda Gonzalez – CUBA

Summer brought with it to Havana a breathless cultural activity. Opening August 7, 1998, at the Centro Wilfredo Lam was the Women Beyond Borders Exhibition, of special relevance in our aesthetic environment and of great resonance at an international level. If my memory serves me, I believe that this is the second cultural exchange between our institution and the United States; the first took place when we received an exhibition by North American artists titled Contra el bloqueo . (Against the Blockade)

Winsom - WBB Artist/Canada, Lorraine Serena, and Magda Gonzales curator at the Wifredo Lam Center and WBB curator, organizer — Winsom, Lorraine Serena, and Magda Gonzales Mora, Co-director and curator at the Wifredo Lam Center

Women beyond borders is a project that exceeds its own expectations. It is a common aspiration that extends beyond its own borders and stimulates enriching interchange. It not only gathers artwork from different parts of the planet but also guarantees indestructible ties of human emotion and respect. It is an infinite dream that stimulates commitment to future proposals in an act of praiseworthy tribute.

Lorraine Serena and WBB Cuban Artists — Yamilys Brito, Lorraine Serena, Belkis Ayon Manso, and Jacqueline Brito

On this occasion the WBB project is much more a reconciliation centered on the conflicts, needs, aspirations, repercussions, etc., of feminine activity in our environment. The project’s intent not only puts the woman artist at the forefront but also offers these artists a freedom of choice as they approach different types of art–such as photography, painting, sculpture, printmaking, and why not installation in miniature–starting with a small pattern: a diminutive wood box, which reactivated the ingenuity and talent of all the artists who participated in this magnificent exhibition.

The diversity of Cuban art today is encouraging, so that the Cuban artists shown here demonstrate only some of the thematic directions or artistic paradigms. They are striking to us for their spirit of renewal and their ability to create works with the intention of explaining and implying a series of truths that constitute the active element of their work.

In Cuba we have had relevant figures among women artists not only in the visual arts but also in literature. Some examples should be mentioned: Amelia Pelaez was able to masterfully integrate the lessons of the European avant-garde, to give to posterity magnificent canvases of Havana interiors, showing all the richness and splendor of our colonial architecture. Antonia Eiriz produces violently expressionist work, possessed of a profound and passionate force, reflecting the drama of the moment. Equally celebrated are the vindicating texts on the liberties of women, the texts of Gertudis Gómez de Avellaneda and the significant contributions of Vicentina Antuna, Camila Henriquez Urena, and Lydia Cabrera to Latin American letters.

Able inheritors of a tradition, Cuban women artists have known how to channel their symbolic poetics in the issues that mark our tremulous times. The Brito sisters, despite their family relationship and its associated obligations, maintain autonomy in their work.

Yamilys Brito is a tireless printmaker, who in spite of her youth must be mentioned for her contribution to contemporary printmaking. Her personal chronicle or diary captures the enchantments and the tastelessness of her city. Some significant titles are: Callejón sin salida (Cul-de-sac), Via Crucis, Al Final de la Calle (At the End of the Street), among others.

Jacqueline Brito, with her evocative painting, feels a special nostalgia for her surroundings through a stratified process of personalization and a complex cartographic system that revolves around the fabled real or recreated fiction. Life is like theater, and in this piece we adopt different postures all the time, our manner of behaving varies, adjusting itself constantly to our interlocutor, the moment, the place, even the climatic conditions can affect our reactions. The segmentation of her paintings helps us to focus on certain aspects that interest her, and in this way her work has to do with narrated stories, books read, or personal experiences.

Jacqueline Brito – Naufragio, Cuba, 1995

Sandra Ceballos. All the garments used in hospitals serve her as a pretext for expressing the chaotic world in which one finds the human being in urgent need of help. She always maintains a feminist stance, a vanguard stance that criticizes and erodes masculine virility in a socialist society like ours. Her work is shocking, aggressive, without affectation, of a moving purity. Paralleling her work as an artist, she directed an alternative gallery known as Espacio Aglutinador, which carries out excellent curatorial projects with Cuban and foreign artists.

Zaida del Río. Her work takes us to another narrative dimension, which allows us to make a fantastic voyage where elements of her personal life constantly mingle with African myths and rural legends. In many cases she herself is the protagonist; thus we see the figure of Yemaya, crowned with a bird’s head, reappearing like the trick of a ghost that guides us in its passage. She belongs to the first generation of artists graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte. Endowed with excellent drawing skills, she also works in ceramics, painting, and photography. The artist has noted that for her any theme can provoke a storm of emotions.

Aimée García. Starting from a variety of allegories she relates her poetic artistry to the feminine condition and its sensibility. She recovers the image of woman over different periods in the history of art and religion. With irony she parodies the traditional canons of feminine beauty, subordinated to affectations of pose and display. Her works compete with conventional art forms, and they receive ornament and handwork as the stigmatizing sign of the female sex.

Rocio Garcia Nuez - WBB artist in her studio in Havana — Rocio Garcia in her studio in Havana

Rocío García. Her work is a constant play with quotation and parody, in many cases referring to Greco-Roman culture, thereby establishing timely parables about sexuality that have parallels in today’s society, she tries to bring to light the human side of amorous relations between people of the same sex, with reference to the polarity created between acceptance and repression by others.

Minerva López is a self-taught artist, gifted with a special sensibility. In her painted fables she recreates myths, recollections that she has preserved since childhood, based fundamentally on rural life. She has also borrowed African religious themes, which have earned her prizes in the Biennial Arte Bantu organized by the Bantu International Center of Civilization in Zaire.

Jacqueline Maggi remains at the edge of all the tendencies or groups favored by critics. Nevertheless, her work is always represented in shows and competitions. She has a special talent for recycling found objects and for experimentation. Not long ago, she remarked to me that she was keeping a piece of ebony in water to do an installation with umbrellas, etc. She amazes visiting friends who nonetheless trust her creative capacity to revitalize objects made of an old wooden board eaten away by time.

Elsa Mora, WBB artist in her home in Havana, Cuba — Elsa Mora, WBB artist in her home in Havana.

Elsa Mora. Her work possesses great visual subtlety, resulting from a profound personal experience, which amplifies or intensifies our sensory perception in order to free recollections associated with different places and moments in time. The different textural effects in her works are a continual provocation to penetrate them, to leave our own traces imprinted, as a record of our lives, as vestiges of our existence and our passage, converting us in this way into recipients of her singular interior richness and into witnesses-accomplices of her spiritual ecstasy, of her supreme clairvoyance.

Elsa Mora – Este Es El Misterio, Cuba, 1995

Grisell Morales recreates the entire domestic world of tasks that are exclusively those of women, like embroidery, tailoring and sewing, knitting, etc., taught and transmitted over generations in the old schools of homemaking. Grisell tries to preserve this familiar memory of the past with great tenderness and respect. Thus in her installations she incorporates different objects (embroidery hoops, pins, sewing patterns, industrial fabrics, etc.) once used by our grandmothers and our mothers.

Grisell Morales - Vulnerable, Cuba — Grisell Morales – Vulnerable, Cuba

Cirenaica Moreira photographic montages are permeated by theatrical gesture, honoring her true profession: acting. Cirenaica is an artist given to excess when it comes to taking on daring projects. Recently, she completed a film that she ventured to make with her photographer-husband Carlos Alom. Her work takes us to the world of affective memory, be it individual or collective. She creates strongly charged, poetic pieces with an aesthetic impulse that springs directly from the unconscious.

Marta María Pérez maintains the anthropocentric character of her work, working from her own body. In her formulations she includes the entire conceptual structure of myths, the taboos and rituals rooted in popular beliefs. One feels in her work a metaphoric reclamation of woman’s role, of her possibilities and her existential problems.

Sandra Ramos’ theme of migrations has been an obsessive constant in her work. She alludes to the ocean voyage, to the risks accrued by frustrated desires, to the rupture of personal emotional ties, with all the repercussions and trauma that an act of this avant-garde breadth can provoke in our psyche. Sandra is, in many instances, the protagonist of her installations; she incorporates in them suitcases filled with memories and hopes. In a metaphorical way, her proposals claim the attention of all of us in one form or another suffer the effects of crisis.

Lidzie Alviza starts from the premise of “art-life!” Her work and her personal-experiential memory strongly overlap. She tries to reconstruct episodes from the past, gathering all kinds of familiar objects: embroidered handkerchiefs, lace work deteriorated with age, negatives, photographs, etc., in work that formerly favored the use of ingenious metaphors. The birth of her daughter Alicia has deeply affected her artwork, and Lidzie includes her in some of the works. The artist thinks of herself as a “reliquary” holding all of those intimate objects. She wears a strong mask in order to unveil these memories.

Belkis Ayón, who belongs to the generation of the 1990’s, makes large-format prints that refer to the religious rites of the Secret Society ABUKUA, a sect for men. The artist’s greatest merit lies in her ability to adopt the mythic force of ethical and philosophical belief system in order to penetrate and manipulate iconography. She does this through meticulous prior study in which she de sanctifies the myth and incorporates it into the world of her own experience, in a discourse based on the symbolic.

SEE BOXES FROM CUBA

CROATIA

Melong Space

Zagreb, Croatia
April, 1998

Nada Beros, Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art, Curator and Coordinator
Nancy Doll, Contact

DIALOGUE AMONG DIVIDED WOMEN

Nada Beros – CROATIA

An indoor and outdoor installation of boxes from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Slovenia was arranged by Nada Beros, curator of the Zagreb Museum of Contemporary Art. In addition, a virtual exhibition of boxes from around the world was projected on the walls. Women participants from Sarajevo were in Zagreb for three days for the event.

The six women artists whose works we are presenting as part of the international art exhibition Women Beyond Borders is a small but characteristic sampling of contemporary art in Croatia. We have endeavored to show the work of three generations of artists whose works came into play in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, and who either directly or indirectly interpret women’s issues. We believe that the heterogeneity of their art and approaches, ranging from post conceptualism and post minimalism to ambient and interactive approaches, plus the strength and relevance of artistic discourse confirms the liveliness and high level of achievement in the contemporary art scene in Croatia.

Sanja Ivekovic - Ex-tension, 1998, CROATIA — Sanja Ivekovic – Ex-tension, 1998, CROATIA

Sanja Ivekovic, whose work is based on conceptualism and feminist thought, is one of the most vital representatives of contemporary Croatian art. In her work entitled Ex/tension for the WBB project, the artist combines a post-conceptual approach with feminist criticism. On her assigned box, which she treats as ready-made, the artist draws out the essential nature of the elastic band, which has a very practical use in this work. The elastic band holds together the guidelines for participation in the WBB project, which are printed on a piece of paper and serve as a formula for the artist. The word extension, which refers to the size of the work, is interpreted by the artist as having a double meaning: that of past tension and of extension. She covers the box with multi-colored elastic bands– the kind homemakers regularly use to prepare preserves, leaving only the label of the product visible. The box thus becomes an object of soft, rounded edges, with an unrecognizable function, just as the role of the elastic bands is altered. (Statement from artist: “Please, put one rubber band over the box-let’s keep our spirit growing!!!”)

Vlasta Delimar is one of the most radical Croatian women artists. Her trademark, regardless of the medium, is her own face, which is most often a photographic self-portrait, sometimes interpolated in fixed surroundings of ambiguous meaning. We find a similar ambiguous message in her work entitled WHY? The artist perceives the box as a mother’s body, which she places on lace. a characteristic material that is frequently used in her work. With this lace she emphasizes lightness and fragility, just as the open box allows the body freedom and flotation. The artist’s photographic self-portrait is covered by a condom, quite possibly the most widespread and most advertised device in today’s world. It is no wonder then that this equally powerful and undesirable aid, blocked on the path between love and responsibility, the body’s desire and fear, is at the same time protecting the face while making it more open and vulnerable.

Jelena Peric is an artist who consistently continues the tradition of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction in her work. Her series regularly transforms two-dimensional models into structurally complex spatial entities. She aspires to relativize the artistic act and its uniqueness and particularity by using geometric forms, the square and rectangle, monochromatic and dichromatic color schemes, and an impersonal way of painting. In her work Untitled, she transforms the box into a post-minimalist sculpture with a simple gesture. By moving the box’s lid to its bottom, filling the newly formed hollow with pieces of red paper (the characteristic color in her work) and then setting the box upright, the artist’s “sculpture” simultaneously plays with the effect of confinement and openness as with the concept of handmade and ready-made.

Ksenija Turcic is an artist who committed herself to spatial work at the beginning of her art career. Her first works are still comprised of object-pictures, but they deny their painterly nature, testing above all spatial relationships, perspective, gravitation, flotation. In her most recent works, the material that is most often found in her installations and settings is the mirror. Simultaneously cold and sensitive to gusts of air and heat, hard and susceptible to breakage, light and dark, reflective and absorbent, this material shows itself to be ideal for the artist’s current considerations of space and our place in it. By covering the sides of the box with mirror surfaces–resting precisely one against another and constructing an inner box that looks into itself, into its own womb, into its own darkness–the artist creates an inverted situation. Instead of “expanding,” dilating the space, she destines it to disillusion and tautology. The title Open Me, however, explicitly guides one to its different life, to the game of light and reflection, change and transience, strength and fluidity.

Ivana Kesser, Personal Newspapers, 1998, Croatia

In 1994 Ivana Keser began her project titled “Exhibition of Local Newspapers”, which was envisioned as a work-in-progress. For this project, she published only one copy of her Personal Newspapers project, dated February 25, 1998. Investigating the relation between the private and public domains, the artist wittily toys with the stereotype of uniqueness, which in itself ties in with some difficulty in reference to newspapers. “Personal discourse,” small dimensions, and the publication of only one copy is her way of paradoxically increasing the value of these newspapers, transforming this otherwise inflationary product that quickly dates itself into a work of art of universal meaning.

Magdalena Pederin is among the rare Croatian women artists of the younger generation who has methodically pursued new media and interactive projects. The miniature wooden box from the WBB project serves as an old-fashioned container in which she places LED diodes–indicators of the loudness of recorded sound. Contrasting two different types of material and two different technologies, the artist suggests the need for a new sensitivity.

The simple electronic mechanism is still while the box is closed. When the lid is opened, the battery turns on and the red and green bulbs begin to light up in unison with the increase in sound, entering from the outside including that produced by talking, clapping hands, and similar movements. By tying in the various sensors and materials in this interactive entity, the artist strives to revive the idea of modern synthesis prevalent everywhere, although we are frequently unaware of it.

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SEE BOXES FROM SLOVENIA

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YUGOSLAVIA

1576ac3192684257 — Peggy Orchowski, Jasna Janicijevic and Lorraine Serena

Gallery Zvono

Belgrade, Yugoslavia
November 11 – 19, 1997

Jasna Janicijevic Ph.D., Professor of the University of Belgrade, WBB Coordinator
Peggy Orchowski, Contact

SECRETS & INTIMACIES

Jasna Janicijevic Ph.D. – YUGOSLAVIA

In 1997 WBB gathered several of the most prominent Yugoslav sculptors and painters, as well as a few emerging artists. The opening exhibition of their work in Belgrade showed an unusual variety of expressions and, in a way, reflected the core of the very individual, poetic approach of each participant.

Symbolically, the idea of the box-object was voiced by WBB artist, Gordana Kaljalovic Odanovic, who wrote, “When we say a box we think of an inner room, a secret, intimacy, a safe place, opening, closing, but first of all, of female forms.” These are some conceivable associations. As a gathering point of life energies and the last breath, it can be a cradle as well as a sarcophagus. The life cycle (from birth to death) is closely connected with this multi-evocative object.

Gordna Kaljslovic Odanovic- Model of Intimacy

A box exists by its void which keeps it safe. The inside of the box corresponds to the outside as a positive form to the negative one. Whether small or large, deep or low, long or narrow, it evokes the feeling of intimacy, safety, but also of bodily sensations: touching, holding, feeling. A mechanism of the will to possess, opens its numerous drawers.

Some of the Yugoslav artists present themselves through their own thoughts:

An essay by Milica Stevanovic appears in her new book, titled Perspective in Gravitational Fields and Other Themes. Paintings, drawings, and objects deal with the exploration of perspective in a space where things are permanently contorted, if we understand the contortion as mutual influence among the things themselves as well as between us and them. The lines of these influences or actions form a certain “contorted space,” which we can treat as a contorted space of our own consciousness from which emerge the images of the objects we observe or imagine.

One of the imagined objects appears in her box Unknown Thing. The lid of the box has opened and something “I do not know what” gushed out of it. Something I do not want or maybe do not have to know (to name), since it was not supposed to be named. Perhaps that was what moved the lid. Looking from outside, a box is almost always a shelter– of a secret, of some unpredictable power, of different unexpected things. (Even something that we ourselves put away in some box, could become, after a time, a surprise).

One can never tell if something, or what, will come out of the box, opened or even demolished. Looking from the outside, there is something Unpredictable and Infinite in the box. Looking from inside, a box means something quite opposite: closeness between the walls of the predictable, the entropy of certainty. However, the very event of opening/destroying the box does not allow taking an easy watching distance. Or, does not give a chance for choosing and changing the point of view (on the relation outside-inside). “The opening of the box” as an action or event confronts us directly with a unique, raw, naked reality, with the need to define ourselves critically toward it and to involve ourselves in the events with our own activity. The titles for this event (“opening of the box”) therefore, could be different, although they all say (almost) the same thing: power of change, life, protest, play, etc. and of all that seems to be inevitable, though we do not know what it will be like.

Nevena Hadji-Jovancic sculptures are fragments of reminiscence, but they are also literal physical fragments. It is important that each sculpture, each piece has enough space and therefore reminds us of still life. They are loud forms because of the versatile material: acrylic on velvet and painted plaster. Also, her sculptures are noisy, since the color with its smoothness, its uniformity, connects scattered parts into one plane. But the color is unusual, as in her tiger colored box, with little figures of animals, the memories of childhood: Yes, I Remember.

Borislava Nedeljkovic-Prodanovic is a sculptor, painter, and craftsman, working with clay and metal, which helps her to seek through the transparency of the world for the new non-descriptive forms, always strong and vigorous but at the same time light and small. Just like her box Atlas, which establishes not only a dialogue between the material and space but also between different materials: aluminum and wood. Her sculptures stick to the space, adapt to it without confrontation, but they also fight for survival and oppose the limits of spatial and spiritual existence.

Gordana Kaljalovic-Odanovic tries to expand traditional artistic expression as well as the associative dimension of the work of art. The chosen medium– wood– the ways of treating the planes, the leveling of the rhythms, cuts and carvings, suggest some subtle variations of the objects. Attached to the pure plastic form, the ways of building by constructing and composing, reduction and cleanliness, typical of modernist practice, are visible in her sensitively planned and carefully built sculptures. The visual impact and the power of attraction of these integral forms full of intimate geometry, suggest an open and subtle emotional experience.

Darja Kacic‘s main concept, which defines the context of her work, deals with permanent movements, assimilation, and colonization of new territories. Her Vivarium for Snowflakes and Stardust, refers to the little box as an object for a woman, containing all the exquisiteness, wealth and mystery, safety and dreams she possesses, as well as her disorders. It is her tiny pet-toy, which she never abandons throughout her whole life. Fluently changing so many of her daily roles, she tugs her little vivarium along, and in it her snowflakes and glitters, snakes and puppies, babies and tears.

SEE BOXES FROM YUGOSLAVIA

UNITED KINGDOM, IRELAND & AIRPORTS

Valerie Squires, Mayor of Milton Keynes and Penny Paine, Coordinator

Milton Keynes Gallery

Milton Keynes, UK
July 12 – August 16, 1997

Francesca Alden, Gallery Officer

Soraya Billimoria, Assistant Gallery Officer

Emma Gregory, Learning and Development

Marian Wallace, Coordinator

Penny Paine, Contact, Coordinator and WBB Artist

Newport Community Center

Newport, Ireland
July 25 – August 30, 1999

Maureen McGee, Coordinator

Penny Paine, Contact, Coordinator and WBB Artist

Rivington Gallery

London, UK
July 4 – 12, 2000

Harold Werner Rubin, Director, Rivington Gallery

Barbara Grundy, Chair, Foundation for Women’s Art

Belinda Harding, Co-Chair, Foundation for Women’s Art

Penny Paine, Contact, Coordinator and WBB Artist

International Airports

Heathrow and Stansted Airports, UK
March – June, 2000

Barbara Grundy, Chair, Foundation for Women’s Art

Belinda Harding, Co-Chair, Foundation for Women’s Art

Two pieces were even handed over to me under the clock at Waterloo Station along with hugs and tears followed by cups of tea

– Penny Paine, Santa Barbara 1997

THE BEST OF BRITISH…

I was hooked from the moment I heard about Women Beyond Borders. With a fine arts degree from the University of London and twenty-five years of professional work in gender equality in the United States, this project somehow brought it all together… a way I could nourish my roots. Noticing that there were no participants from Great Britain. I proposed to founder Lorraine Serena that I would like to sponsor and gather some British women artists. I felt sure I could find some and I was equally sure there would be a venue eager to participate in this amazing and inspiring effort.

So where other participating nations started with a curator, Great Britain started with artists. It was a bit like the A. A. Milne poem, the King asked the Queen who asked the dairymaid who asked the cow… and so on. One contact led to another, which luckily led to a gallery. The artists were not quite sure what this was all about but they agreed to work quickly and coordinated with my own visit to see my parents. As requested boxes arrived at my parents’ house through the mail or were delivered in person. Two pieces were even handed over to me under the clock at Waterloo Station along with hugs and tears followed by cups of tea.

Finding a venue proved much harder than anticipated. I got responses like “ We have done women this year.” or ” We are scheduled for the next five years.” There were many transatlantic phone calls in the early hours of the morning, along with faxes and email. Eventually, with the help of Marian Wallis, a participant artist along with the persistence of Francesca Alden, curator for the Milton Keynes Public Library, the Milton Keynes venue was scheduled for July 12th – August 16, 1997.

Boxes from the USA, Great Britain and the original traveling exhibit were brought together and totaled 200 boxes (the remaining 88 boxes in the collection joined the exhibit for Greece). The boxes made an impressive statement and were wonderfully displayed by Curator Soraya Billimoria and assistant Emma Greggory. Along with the museum staff they worked diligently to set up the venue assisted by Alexa Allen, intern from Scripps College, Pomona, CA and myself.

The exhibit was officially opened by Milton Keynes Mayor Valerie Squires and guests viewed the exhibit while being serenaded by a string quartet and refreshed with very English Pimms #1 and cucumber sandwiches.

With new additions there was now a total of twelve British boxes. Support and interest from Belinda Harding and Barbara Grundy, Board Members with the Museum of Women’s Art, London was encouraging and it is hoped that another venue in London to benefit their cause to obtain a building and to celebrate the millennium can be arranged.

Penny Paine introducing Women Beyond Borders in Ireland

PLENTY TO DECLARE

The Guardian National Newspaper

John Henshaw, Journalist – ENGLAND

That doyen of box art, Joseph Cornell, would no doubt approve.

– Barbara Grundy, Chair of The Foundation for Women’s Art, London

Plenty to declare If you want to understand woman’s place in the 21st century, try looking in a box at Stansted airport. John Henshall reports International Women’s Day: special report Wednesday March 8, 2000. Travellers who pass through Stansted airport in Essex over the next four months will be able to view a radically original touring exhibition of the work of women artists from around the globe.

One hundred boxes, featuring a huge range of art forms, go on display from today, International Women’s Day. They will remain at the airport, accessible to all visitors, until the end of June, when the curators hope to show them in London for at least a week before they travel to Athens on the next leg of their journey. The show is called Women Beyond Borders (WBB) and its British visit constitutes the millennial exhibition by the London-based Foundation for Women’s Art, which was launched in 1992 as the Museum of Women’s Art. The FWA persuaded the airline KLM and BAA to co-sponsor the Stansted display, and most of the boxes, which are made from pine and are about the size of a large chocolate box, are in KLM’s departure lounge.

It seems fitting that these exquisitely decorated artifacts, from which explode displays of painting, sculpture or found objects (with the box as part of the artwork) should be displayed in an airport, since they have been circling the earth since their creation. The WBB “mail art” project was started by two American artists, Lorraine Serena and Elena Siff, at Santa Barbara, California, in 1992. Their idea was to devise a traveling show “to honor and connect women on a global, grass-roots, collaborative basis”. They sent self-assembly kits to curators in 15 countries, who each invited 12 women artists to transform a box into a work of art.

The pieces were first shown in Santa Barbara in 1995; now there are 400 boxes, and WBB shows have been staged in 26 countries. The Stansted show is the first in the UK. The participating artists have agreed to give up ownership of their works for the permanent collection that Serena and Siff intend to establish in California next year. While the WBB exhibition is in this country, a number of British women artists and women in public life will construct their own boxes, to add to an already diverse collection. The chair of the FWA, Barbara Grundy, used to run a commercial gallery in London, and took on the job of organizing the MWA/FWA at the end of last year. Since then the FWA has identified a suitable exhibition space in central London, one that is not currently used for showing art. The FWA has not yet secured funding for a permanent space, though Grundy will oversee the preparation of a new application to the heritage lottery fund. So far, a lack of funds has restricted the FWA to mounting about one show a year, at other people’s galleries.

Previous exhibitions have included the work of the tragic and neglected Cynthia Fell, who died in a psychiatric hospital in 1977 aged 44. An earlier show highlighted the work of Charlotte Salomon, a Jewish artist working in wartime Europe who entrusted her “visual autobiography” of 1,300 gouaches to a French friend before she was killed by the Nazis at Auschwitz in 1943, aged 26. Grundy describes the WBB project as “an example of women at the end of a century of intense change, showing solidarity with one another and looking at where we’ve got to in relation to our role and place after decades of struggle”. The result is an exhibition of masterly creativity and admirable resourcefulness. That doyen of box art, Joseph Cornell, would no doubt approve.

IRELAND

A LETTER FROM IRELAND

IRELAND loves the boxes

I can now be at the next lunch as we Mr. Paine and myself are not going away. I am glad and sad I really was looking forward to sleeping a little. Oh well. I have had two calls from Ireland. They put a notice in a National paper and had some response from women and they have a center in Dublin involved. Maureen said this project could easily get out of hand! the interest is great! I said it already was out of hand! Can Ireland have ten boxes they already have four so that would make 14 and we are set for the mini Irish venue and she will get me details for the Dublin connection. I will get stuff to send after you are back and if you ok this. Also I noted that a Girls Inc. got 100,000 from the UPS Foundation for computers. UPS is boxes and I think they should give money we need to review. See you soon. Enjoy the children and I agree about the temperature it can’t be healthy. We did not have central heating until I was about 15! Just a boiler for the water and a fire in the front room! – Love from Penny

– email from Penny Paine to Lorraine Serena

A FAX FROM IRELAND

October, 1998

Dear Mairin,

A quick hello from Santa Barbara everyone is very excited about visiting Newport next year for the handball tournament and the proposed exhibit. It is a go and the only thing that Women Beyond Borders asks is that perhaps a couple of women artists from Northern Ireland could be found and asked to participate. Let me know about that…(I did explain that they really belong to the UK!) but give me your thoughts as we will need to send over more boxes and forms. Have you talked to Sinaed because if nothing else she and her colleagues can help identify possible Irish national and local artists.

I will bring over about 25 boxes from other places and with the Irish submissions we hope to have about 40 for the exhibit. You can certainly do one to honor Graine Uhaille…definitely a great idea.

Maureen McGovern is interested in helping and she would be happy to pin down the gallery space, etc. As it stands we could open on the Saturday or Sunday for the handball players and local dignitaries with a special preview and perhaps midweek for the public. I am faxing this but I need your address to send forms and photos. Talk soon.

Love Penny

PS We drove through Omagh just an hour before the bombing. Shocking.

– Fax from Penny Paine to Mairin McGee, Artist and Curator at the Galway Art Center, Ireland

Vera Kealy – Simply Confused – Ireland, 1999
I robbed my little box of a purpose, but I gave it yours.

Caroline Coon – One Thousand Years Of Sewing Into The Night – UK, 2000
My grandmother’s sewing box, a gift from her mother, handed down to me by my mother, is my inspiration for Women beyond borders. I have made a tiny sarcophagus of pins, cotton and frayed red velvet – to symbolize thousands of droplets of blood from pin-pricked fingers – all embedded in the wax of candles burned into the night, lighting women’s often unappreciated work of skill, toil and pleasure.

Penny Paine – Dispelling the Cinderella Myth – USA, 1995
For all the girls growing up today:
A Pumpkin, Six White Mice,
and a Pair of Glass Slippers Just Won’t Do.

Dedicated to Mindy Bingham and Sandy Stryker.

SEE BOXES FROM UK

SEE BOXES FROM IRELAND

ITALY

Galleria Extra Moenia – Arte Moderna

Todi, Italy
May 4 – June 14, 1997

Giuliana Dorazio, Director
Ken Noland, Contact

OBJECTS OF MAGIC AND ENCHANTMENT

Women Beyond Borders narrates in a succession of expressions, the most interesting aspects of female art produced today in Europe and beyond.

– Martina Corgnati, Art historian

Gallery Extra Moenia – Arte Moderna, located in a 15th C villa overlooking the hills of Umbria, was the site of the WBB exhibition in Italy. The exhibition brought together WBB participants from Rome, Perugia, and Florence. Anthropologist Dr. Cecilia Gatto Trocchi spoke in the gallery on her impressions of the exhibition. In Dr. Trocchi’s words, “A simple and extraordinary point of departure, fascinating and complex: give a little box to an artist in order to free her fantasy, creativity, the impulse to meet and talk.”

“WBB is an initiative of planetary dimensions, involving many varied cultures, bringing forth discussions over a cube of unfinished wood of reduced dimensions. The creations are dressed in images, desires, expectations, dreams, and illusions. The omens and symbolic content of the creations are revealed by each artist in an unambiguous way. The boxes encompass conceptual concerns, crafted objects, nostalgic thoughts, including jewel cases or safety boxes containing treasures or secrets which every woman jealously keeps. These powerful objects represent the spectrum of human experience, love, birth, relationship, courage, violence, power, and death– objects of magic and enchantment.”

Lorraine Serena, Claudine Lapique and her family

Martina Corgnati, art historian from Milan, explains, “WBB narrates, in a succession of expressions, the most interesting aspects of feminine art produced today in different countries, Europe and beyond. Perhaps, to this day, only Cesare Zavattini has conceived of building an exhaustive and exacting collection in “small format,” obliging all the artists, therein, to remain within the measurements of 10×10 cm.”

In reality the challenge of WBB is full of psychological and poetic interest, pertaining to women, such as refinement, intimacy, care for detail, sensibility. It is not surprising to notice these qualities in all the participants selected for this show. The fact that each succeeded in achieving a personal, unmistakable stylistic imprint, even though working within a limited format, is surely remarkable. For example, Carla Accardi, has created a tiny chamber symphony in blues and reds for the exterior and interior surfaces of the support including marks and traces over all that are typically, undeniably Accardian, filling the space that, although minute, seems to open up to an unexpected and unpredictable vastness.

Lorraine Serena, Founder WBB and Giuliana Dorazio, Director Galleria Extra Moenia, Art Moderna — Lorraine Serena, Founder of WBB and Giuliana Dorazio, Director of Galleria Extra Moenia- Arte Moderna

In antithesis to this is the work of another Italian artist who, must be mentioned immediately because of historical precedence. For Dadamaino, actually, the box is not an indifferent support. It is not simply a way like any other to scrawl marks on a concave and a convex surface. On the contrary, it is literally a container in which to place, at least nominally as the title reveals, The Ashes of the Occident, reflecting a strong ideological tinge, yet one that is not without poetry. That there then should be an actual meaning is not so important; what counts is the naming and defining of meaning, and in this Dadamaino recalls the procedure conceived by her friend Piero Manzoni. The container, however, the symbolic urn, is closed. Is there really someone who would touch the ashes?

Claudine Lapique - The Gossip Box, Italy, 1995 — Claudine Lapique – The Gossip Box, Italy, 1995

The Gossip Box by Claudine Lapique and Al Cuore del Cuor by Lise Apatoff are realistic miniaturizations of imaginable full-scale stages- A theater in the real sense of the word, which brings to mind the intimate and glittering choreography of Fausto Melotti. Rich with narrative values, magical boxes from which a story might issue, resulting from the meaningful contrast between internal and external: the sober decoration or almost subdued banality outside; and the extremely detached, colorful, even glittering descriptive treatment inside.

With playful curiosity, a taste for discovery, and the preciousness of fragments, Angela Dorazio (Num Num), Ilse Girona (Fancy), and Maril Eustachio (L’occhio) were chosen to represent our country on this long journey. An unbearable pleasure in painting appears, especially in the works by Dorazio and Girona. A sensitivity to images, overlapping and entwining in multicolored knots, transforms the container in to an unexpected visual carillon. In general, a certain discrete and intelligent concern for painting emerges in the work of the Italian artists. A brief and very general look at this exhibition, which is truly beyond borders, offers an overall view of the creativity of women artists, and of their expressions of imagination and freedom.

SEE BOXES FROM ITALY

KENYA

Nairobi National Museum

Nairobi, Kenya
January 21 – February 28, 1997

Yony Waite, Curator, Coordinator and WBB Artist
Wendy Karmali, Director
Ruth Schaffner, Art Dealer, Art Collector
Gail Berkus, Art Collector

HONORING WOMEN IN AFRICA

This aptly titled exhibition defies borders bringing together women artists from all continents into one space in an unprecedented event in the Kenyan art world.

– Peter Kimani, Daily Nation, Nairobi, Kenya

Yoni Waite, WBB Kenyan Artist and Curator — Yony Waite, WBB Kenyan Artist and Curator

In February 1995 Yony Waite, a WBB Kenyan Artist and Curator, hand-delivered the first completed boxes for the Women Beyond Borders exhibition to California. She arrived via Greyhound bus just down the street from Lorraine Serena’s studio to personally deliver the works. Yony began to unwrap them, revealing the impact of time, energy, and creativity invested by each individual artist. Themes encompassed the emptiness of prostitution, pride and reverence for culture, imprisonment of body and soul, respect for nature, mystery and magic. Yony told us that “African women have a strong desire to interact with women from other countries. Women Beyond Borders is an enormous step in enriching and connecting us. In Kenya, women have been subjugated for years as chattel, but recently many have begun finding their voices and power. We are delighted to work with Women Beyond Borders and look forward to networking with creative groups worldwide.”

Yony Waite – Untitled Ambiguity, Kenya, 1999

Before Yony left to continue her journey, she expressed her gratitude for the growing recognition of women artists in Kenya and Uganda. The National Museum of Kenya would go on to honor the African participants of WBB with an unprecedented women’s exhibition at the museum.

It’s wonderful being part of the worldwide web of women artists and particularly of this first global tour. Experiencing each box, as we dismantled the show at the National Museum, gave me an incredible range of sensations, from awe and wonder through shock and distaste. Judging from the remarks heard from the thousands of school children, tourists, and locals who visited the Women Beyond Borders exhibition in Nairobi, most reactions were curiosity and delight, although quite a few viewers were actually frightened!

– Yony Waite, Artist

Margarat Matanda – The Facade of Glamour, Kenya, 1995

The glamour we see in women is not always representative of her inner self. It is just a facade. This box has all that goes with glamour on its outside, but on the inside it has all the turmoil and agony resulting from her daily chores.

– Margarat Matanda, Artist

G. Kabura Simpiri – My Culture My Pride, Kenya, 1995

The Maasai are a pastoral people who live in Kenya and Tanzania in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa. The Maasai believe all the cattle on earth were given to them by God. The Maasai way of life is spent in moving from one place to another in search of grass and water for their herds.

Today, the unique customs and traditions of the Maasai still exist and are treasured by them. Great effort must be made by all to see that this treasured culture is preserved for the future.

By revealing this beauty of the Maasai people, I hope my contribution in some way helps in the preservation of this priceless culture.

The small portrait is of a Maasai woman painted on a fragment of a special and very useful “Oleleishwa” tree. The tree is used by the Maasai to clean calabashes for milk, as perfume, for making clubs and thatching beds.

– G. Kabura Simpiri, Artist

SEE BOXES FROM KENYA

RUSSIA

The boxes arrive in St. Petersburg on a train at midnight

Ethnographic Museum – Russian Museum Complex

St. Petersburg, Russia
December 9 – 30, 1996

Polina Fedorova, Curator and Coordinator
Tatiana Stepanova Ivanova, St. Petersburg A/YA Society
Katya Galitzine, Coordinator
Lynn Scarlett, Coordinator,
Nina Vozobieva, Chief of Art Department of the Ethnographic Museum

ST. PETERSBURG IN WINTER

Due to the inspiration of Lynn Scarlett in California, the WBB exhibition was introduced to Princess Katya Galitzine, an artist and writer. Katya was visiting Santa Barbara to promote The Romanov Legacy, a book for which she wrote the introduction. Through Katya’s efforts, Polina Fedorova, who was working with the St. Petersburg A/YA Society became the coordinator of the WBB Exhibition in Russia.

After seeing boxes from Vietnamese, Cuban and Israeli women, I felt such a big pain in my heart. I understand the cries, tears, and sorrows of the persecuted nations.

I want to tell more and more feelings which I had while looking at every box in this exhibition. I really enjoyed visiting such an original exhibition. I think we should have more exhibitions like this which give us the hope of being understood, of being able to break the chains our society has put upon us.

I want to thank you for idea of creating such boxes which open up the worlds, souls and hearts of women for others and helps us to find strength in our future fight with our destiny.

– Helen, 16 years old

Pink marble room at the Russian Ethnographic Museum, St. Petersburg

When the “Boxes on the Train” exhibition from Austria arrived in St. Petersburg, it was unprecedented news. Through Polina’s efforts, the arrival and exhibition of WBB in Russia was televised throughout the entire Russian Federation. Her experiences regarding the exhibition became increasingly complex because the official documents for the exhibition were confiscated during a customs check on the train trip. Despite this, WBB exhibition was installed by Polina and friends with the help of the A/YA Society, in the magnificent Russian Ethnographic Museum.

The details of the departure of the trip from St. Petersburg to Nairobi, Kenya, are too numerous and complex to mention here. In the end, after thirty letters were sent to Russia Customs from US Senators, Russian dignitaries, US Cultural Organizations, Consul Generals etc, the only way to transport the exhibition out of Russia was for a Russian, in this case Polina Federova, to personally accompany the exhibition to the National Museum of Kenya. Funds were raised in St. Petersburg and by WBB in California, in order to sponsor her trip to Kenya. Polina left Russia in below zero weather to arrive in the heat of Kenya in time to assist with the installation and opening of WBB. For this major effort, WBB is grateful to Polina for her determination and perseverance.

record — Polina Fedorova – Untitled 1996 RUSSIA

Everything started when the boxes were stopped by Russian customs on the train trip from Austria. The customs officials said that there were no documents and Russian laws do not allow anything unofficial to pass the border.

It took me and my friends two nights to replace all the labels on the boxes. Beside that, I had to argue with several customs officers to get a stamp on the documents: “No cultural value”. Only then I was able to cross the Russian border.

At Nairobi airport I was met by the curator of National Museum of Kenya, Contemporary Gallery. She was was very surprised to meet me carrying just a couple of bags (but the bags were pretty heavy). The exhibition when first shipped from Santa Barbara to Israel weighed almost 300 lbs., now I had the exhibition in suitcases.

– Polina Fedorova, WBB Curator

Elisabeth Haitto Connah, WBB Sweden/Finland curator, Lorraine Serena, WBB artists, Polina Fedorova WBB Russia curator — Elisabeth Haitto Connah, WBB Sweden/Finland curator, Lorraine Serena, A pair of WBB artists, Polina Fedorova, WBB Russia curator

In Russia, women of all ages were deeply moved by the personal expressions viewed from around the world. Visitors expected images similar to the traditional painted boxes found in Russia, depicting fairy tales and troika rides. As viewers examined the boxes, they felt terror and awe at the intense and direct universal expressions, which ran the gamut from birth to death. Response to the exhibition is best described by young women viewers themselves from the All Girls Gymnasium N. 628 in St. Petersburg who visited the exhibition.

When I was told about this exhibition, I thought that these boxes would be painted as simple boxes for jewelry, so when I saw the exhibition, I was surprised. Everything was strange and unusual to me. We tried to understand the inner world of some women artists according to their boxes. I felt pain, sorrow, tears, yet hope. I cannot remember all the works of all the women, but I want to tell them that they are very courageous.

When our teachers suggested us to think about our own boxes, I understood that it is very hard to show my own inner world. First, it is hard to get the better of fear. Next, I don’t know how to transfer my idea in life. If I could create my own box, it would be only for me. I’m afraid to share my own world with other people, because it may not be interesting or understood by the majority of them.

Maybe I’ll do my own box in order to show you my love of the earth and of the world. I want to show people that they are loved and that they are needed. Maybe it is one of the themes of the boxes.

– Maria Molchanova, 16 years old, St. Petersburg, Russia

Russian School Girls visiting the Women Beyond Borders exhibition in St. Petersburg

I am very impressed of this exhibition. I’ve never seen anything of that kind! I didn’t expect to find in a small hall that very colorful, vivid and unlimited collection of little boxes. Each of those boxes is enriched by the mood and inner world, the way of thinking of those women The boxes contain individuality and soul.

At first sight the boxes may seem pleasant, like unusual things that are very carefully and sincerely made. But a lot of work, imagination and women’s truth is put in them.Frankly speaking, those boxes which were close to my soul and my vision of the world. I wished to have at home on my table. I think that the arguments and commentaries on the meaning of any of those boxes will never end.

Women doesn’t limit herself and doesn’t want her box to be evaluated strictly, I believe. I was mostly impressed by works of Cuba and Vietnamese women. I knew and understood a lot while viewing this exhibition in Russia, in a famous museum which I visited nearly everyday in my childhood and liked very much, and which I like now even more.

– Claire, 16 years old, St. Petersburg – Russia

SEE BOXES ON A TRAIN PAGE

SEE BOXES FROM RUSSIA

BOXES ON THE TRAIN

Eva Ursprung, WBB Austria Curator and Artist; Doris Jauk-Hinz, WBB Artist and Coordinator; Veronica Drier, WBB Coordinator speaking to reporter in Lviv, Ukraine — Eva Ursprung, Doris Jauk-Hinz, and Veronica Drier speaking to reporter in Lviv, Ukraine

Austria to Russia

Graz, Austria
Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Lviv, Ukraine
St.Petersburg, Russia
August 29 – September 1, 1996

Project Team: Eva Ursprung, Gina Ballinger,
Ingeborg Pock, Doris Jauk-Hinz and Veronika Dreier
Contact: Elena Siff

SCHEDULE

8/29/96 Opening and Bon Voyage Buffet – 6 pm Graz Houptbahnhof
8/30/96 Presentation and Champagne Breakfast 9 am – 10:07 am Vienna Westbahnhof
8/30/96 Presentation – 1:18 pm – 4:14 pm Budapest Train Station
9/1/96 Arrival and Transfer of Boxes to WBB St. Petersburg

BOXES ON THE TRAIN

Boxes on the Train Catalog

Eva Ursprung, WBB Artist and Curator

Our WBB exhibition crossing eight borders was quite an experience! In addition to openings in train stations, we went through the entire train from time to time, inviting people to come to our rented car to view the “Boxes On the Train” exhibition. Some passengers stayed with us for hours into the night discussing the project. Everybody told us that this trip would be impossible. I like to do impossible things.

In August 1996, the WBB exhibition was due in Graz, Austria. With St. Petersburg, Russia next on the schedule, conceived of an original idea. They installed the boxes in a rented train car, creating a moveable sculpture in a newly defined open space moving from Graz, Austria past Vienna, Budapest and Lviv, Ukraine and on to St. Petersburg. Passengers viewed the exhibition en route with presentations and receptions held in train stations along the way.

The installation was presented in a nostalgic sleeper compartment, beset with golden drapery, a silver tea service, three women artists, a writer, a photographer, two EDP experts, two Russian sleeper attendants, a laptop with an Internet connection, a video camera and 178 boxes from women artists all around the world. The exhibition crossed eight borders on the way to St. Petersburg.

boxes-on-the-train-image — Leaving the train station

This sculptural installation, which took its form from the transport process itself was open to all the passengers on the train. Passersby became guests, tours were conducted throughout the WBB wagon.

Both the purpose and the itinerary of the trip were published and recorded. Apart from the press-conferences, publication of the event was mainly concentrated on the internet. The wagon functioned as an ‘analogous’ gallery and a mobile interface between its journey in real space and its virtual correspondence to a “digital gallery.” An online event was planned between those on the train and the artists left behind in Austria and in USA for the exhibition’s arrival in St. Petersburg.

TRAVELING FEVER

Doris Jauk-Hinz placing the boxes in the train

Before we set out we were repeatedly told, it would be impossible to travel through all these countries with 178 artworks and arrive in St. Petersburg unscathed. We were also told that there were no general customs forms and no consistent laws between the new countries, and that we would probably be attacked and robbed by organized bands of thugs and thieves. Just an hour before we were due to depart, we received a call from the Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, suggesting we should postpone the trip for an indefinite amount of time. Then, the Austrian Cultural Attaché in Budapest tried to stop us from setting out, saying it was all far too dangerous.

BETWEEN HERE AND NOWHERE

Eva Ursprung , Boxes on the Train Organizer — Eva Ursprung admiring the exhibition on the train

The idea of border-crossing exhibition with the sole purpose of establishing a world-wide communications network for women artists, overcome separations and find common ground to build upon, free of nationalism, began to appear more and more absurd the further we traveled away from our “Western civilization”. In Hungary, the customs officials let us pass, not without considerable interest, but the project came to a complete halt on the border of the Ukraine in a whirl of total misunderstanding. Everything became different here – not even the width of the train track remains the same: huge cranes heaved the wagon two meters up in the air onto a new substructure conforming to the Russian norm.

The further east our journey took us, the more adventurous it became in an increasingly foreign world. The values and attitudes changed with the kilometers which went ticking by and our undertaking started to appear more and more questionable. The concept of “woman”, “art”, and “nation” here changed at breakneck speed. There was an irate question from a journalist in Lviv; “Why aren’t there national flags by the artists’ names?”

The tone of the customs officials also changed dramatically – in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, there was a heavy pounding on the compartment door, the sound of military boots, and harsh voices yelling “Control!”, with a hasty “No Camera!” following hot on his heels. After checking our passports and a wide-eyed inspection of the boxes, the officials stood there looking totally lost. Our sleeper carriage escorts, themselves not entirely clear on our objective, tried to explain. Our three-language (German, Hungarian and Russian) brochure was avidly studied with great shaking of heads. More officials were called, and, later on, the friends and relatives, wives and children filed through the exhibition far into the night.

Our letter of recommendation from the Austrian Consulate in Moscow (written in Russian) was also thoroughly examined, drawing a few smiles and timid friendliness. Our initial fear was replaced with a sort of fatalistic relaxation. These villages were not even marked on the map and we were surrounded by foreigners as far as the eye could see. Just what exactly were they supposed to do with us? It was obvious they thought we were somewhat crazy but, nevertheless, harmless. The one stark certainty was that they did not want to keep us in their country under any circumstances. A considerable relief was clear all around when some reason could be found to help us continue on our journey. This, however, did not occur without some hiccups. The customs document we had allowing us to take the boxes out of Austria disappeared after one customs check. Then, when we arrived in Russia, we were informed our visa was only partially complete, the part allowing us to leave the country again was missing. It had probably been retained when we had left Belarus.

WOMEN OUT OF CONTROL

Gina Ballinger, WBB Artist and Coordinator

Our arrival in St. Petersburg finally took place after a 64-hour, 40 minute trip, including a twelve-hour delay. In the event, the WBB Internet-Exchange between Graz and Santa Barbara had taken place without us 12 hours before we arrived, and the invited journalists were long tucked up in their beds. The porters wanted to charge thirty dollars for moving the boxes one hundred meters, and Polina Fedorova, responsible for the WBB exhibition in St. Petersburg, had no idea where to store them.

All the next day was spent in the Austrian Consulate and the Russian Ministry. We were in the country illegally, the whole situation was totally impossible, and we weren’t even supposed to be there. After a long period of arguments batted back and forth, we were given a new visa (again in exchange for more dollars), and a resting place was found for the boxes. When Polina had finished reading our letter of recommendation, she turned us with a laugh: In Russian there is no term for borders, only district control. As a result, given this translation, Women Beyond Borders means ‘Women out of Control’.

Contemporary Arts Forum

Santa Barbara, California November 4 – December 23, 1995

A TIMELY ENDEAVOR

Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA

Los Angeles, CA December 2, 2001 – April 21, 2002

University Art Museum, UCSB

Santa Barbara, CA October 1 – December 15, 2002

University of California Santa Barbara

University of California Los Angeles

A PATH WELL TRAVELED

Women Beyond Borders Catalog: The Art of Building a Community

Examples in Relation to Academia

Psychology

SURVIVORS OF THE GENOCIDE IN RWANDA 2006

BUILDING BLOCKS IN VIETNAM 2012

TEEN PROJECT IN LOS ANGELES 2002

Anthropology

Sociology

BOXES ON THE TRAIN AUSTRIA TO RUSSIA 1996

BOYS AND GIRLS STUDY WOMEN’S ISSUES MONTANA 2007

ART EXPRESSING LIFE SEATTLE AND PALO ALTO 2006

DIALOGUE BETWEEN SELF AND COMMUNITY SINGAPORE 2001

WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS: WHAT’S A BOX GOT TO DO WITH IT? REFLECTIONS ON THE BODY 2011

Women’s Studies

Art Education

Addendum

Taipei

Taiwan March 7 – March 30, 2021

A New Exhibition

The Following Was Provided by –

Out of the Box Twice Over

Antikenmuseum Basel

Basel, Switzerland April 28 – June 23, 1996

THE NEED FOR SOLIDARITY

Women Beyond Borders Catalog

ICC Contemporary Gallery Binyaney Ha’ooma

Jerusalem, Israel March 13 – April 27, 1996

A DEDICATION

ARTIST NETWORK BEGINS

Museum of Ventura County

Ventura, California May 3 – July 14, 2019

ANOTHER OPENING OF ANOTHER SHOW

Teen Deval Mandir Temple

Pachali, Kathmandu March 2 – 20, 1998

BOXES TAKE A TREK TO NEPAL

Missoula Art Museum

Missoula, Montana March 12 – June 8, 2007

Thinking INSIDE the box: Local artists add their voices to world-touring ‘Women Beyond Borders’ exhibit

Palo Alto Art Center

Palo Alto, California October 10 – 13, 2006

World Trade Center

Seattle, Washington October, 2006

ART EXPRESSING LIFE

A COLLABORATION WITH TAJIMA CREATIVE

The Frist Center

Nashville, Tennessee March 6 – July 20, 2003

THE MUSEUM EXHIBITION

ADJUNCT PROJECTS

GIRL SCOUTS BEYOND BORDERS

Art Access Gallery

Salt Lake City, Utah March 22 – 29, 2002

LESSONS FROM THE BOXES

Boxes Beyond Borders 2002

WHAT IS A BOX?

IMPORTANCE OF PLACE

FAMILY MEMORIES

SPIRITUAL MYSTERIES

IDENTITY

PERSONAL THEMES

THE VIEWER’S BOX

Maturango Museum

Ridgecrest, CA September 1 – October 13, 2004

VSA ARTS

Salt Lake City, Utah January 18 – March 17, 2002

Sculpture Square

Singapore March 8 – May 13, 2001

WOMEN BEYOND BORDERS: SINGAPORE STYLE

Broome Gallery, California State University, Channel Islands

Camarillo, California January 31 – March 25, 2011

TIN SHEDS GALLERY, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY

Santa Barbara, California
November 4 – December 23, 1995

Los Angeles, CA
December 2, 2001 – April 21, 2002

Santa Barbara, CA
October 1 – December 15, 2002

Taiwan
March 7 – March 30, 2021

Basel, Switzerland
April 28 – June 23, 1996

Jerusalem, Israel
March 13 – April 27, 1996

Ventura, California
May 3 – July 14, 2019

Pachali, Kathmandu
March 2 – 20, 1998

Missoula, Montana
March 12 – June 8, 2007

Thinking INSIDE the box:
Local artists add their voices to world-touring ‘Women Beyond Borders’ exhibit

Palo Alto, California
October 10 – 13, 2006

Seattle, Washington
October, 2006

Nashville, Tennessee
March 6 – July 20, 2003

Salt Lake City, Utah
March 22 – 29, 2002

Ridgecrest, CA
September 1 – October 13, 2004

Salt Lake City, Utah
January 18 – March 17, 2002

Singapore
March 8 – May 13, 2001

Camarillo, California
January 31 – March 25, 2011

August 27 – September 19, 1999
Sydney, Australia

September 22 – October 17, 1999
Manly, Australia

September 30 – October 17, 1999
Broken Hill, Australia

Tenyru, Japan
April 17 – May 30, 1999

Tokyo, Japan
June 4 – 27, 1999

Oaxaca, Mexico
October 17 – December 4, 1998