Section 1: Lorraine Serena
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What inspired the artist to create the artwork?
Propelled by a lifelong interest in shifting paradigms regarding collaboration and inspired by a workshop, Making Art as If the World Mattered, Santa Barbara artist Lorraine Serena gathered local artists and art professionals in 1991 and founded Women Beyond Borders with the intention of honoring and connecting female artists worldwide. The group decided to send small wooden boxes – a powerful symbol for women – to curators and artists in initially fifteen countries. The miniature boxes could be shipped inexpensively around the world, and would offer artists an inspiring form for expressing their thoughts and feelings.
What challenges and risks did the artist face in producing and disseminating the artwork?
Exhibiting and traveling Women Beyond Borders boxes has involved diverse challenges, sometimes even personal risks. Each country hosting the boxes developed a unique format and context. For example, in Jerusalem boxes were exhibited to coincide with an International Women’s Day celebration; in Oaxaca, Mexico, the boxes were shown as part of a program on women’s health issues.
Exhibiting the boxes of ten proved to be an adventure, as organizational obstacles, cultural differences and national borders had to be overcome. For example, in order to exhibit the boxes at the Wilfredo Lam Center in Havana, Cuba, the boxes had to make an unexpected “detour stop” in Toronto, Canada, which was facilitated ad hoc by the Women’s Resource Center there.
In another instance of courageous curating, a group of Austrian artists rented a Russian sleeper car and displayed the boxes in cases installed between the sleeping berths. Literally crossing borders, the exhibition was made accessible to the public en route from Graz to St. Petersburg, via Vienna, Budapest, Lvov, and numerous towns in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Russia. The organizers were challenged with puzzled viewers and unsympathetic border officials.
After the exhibition was eventually shown at the Russian Museum, the boxes had to be secretly hand-carried out of the country to make it to their next destination, the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi, as the visa necessary to officially export them had been retained at one of the border crossings. In yet another instance, boxes were taken in a suitcase by California women on a trek to rural Nepal as facilitators to educate women there about health care, domestic violence, and human rights.
Section 2: About The Artwork
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What messages does the artwork convey and what goals does it try to achieve?
The stated mission of Women Beyond Borders is 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. The process of building community, promoted by Lorraine Serena as her artistic practice, lies at the heart of the project.
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Women Beyond Borders challenges national, political, ethnic, religious, and aesthetic boundaries, transcending borders….does not discriminate….encompassing…
Women Beyond Borders has extended beyond self-imposed divisions of class, politics, race, religion, geography and has at its heart the building of community. The boxes have become a summons for all women to express themselves and to encourage viewers to follow suite. This expansion of community has become the art form and the process.
How does the artwork convey these messages?
Since its inception, Women Beyond Borders has acted as a catalyst for personal reflection and transformation, inter-cultural dialog and understanding, and social change worldwide, thus taking a pivotal position at the intersection of contemporary art and today’s increasingly globalized, multicultural, and digitally connected society.
Women Beyond Borders achieves its goals on multiple levels: the individual box creations; the local community outreach; and the global dialog via the Internet and international travel of the boxes. Following are concrete instances for each of these three levels:
The Boxes
All boxes contain messages that reach beyond aesthetic beauty. They touch on personal, political, or economic realities, as well as on dreams and hopes of their creators. They have become intimate repositories as well as vehicles for educating large audiences.
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Kabura Simpiri of Kenya calls her box My Culture, My Pride. It is a container for a miniature portrait painted on the bark of a tree sacred to her Maasai culture. “By revealing this beauty of the Maasai people, I hope my contribution in some way helps in the preservation of this priceless culture,” she writes. In Kenya women have been subjugated for years as chattel, but recently many have begun finding their voices and power and it is good to see.
Shrare Zandian…..
Jean Tokuda Irwin…..
Akane Asoaka calls her box ,”Until Death Do Us Part.” Inside is a tiny white cotton shirt that extends out from the box and becomes a wedding dress at the other end. In her statement, Asoaka says the piece comes from a collective memory of playing mother. “In Japanese, when we say ‘to get married’ we use the word ‘to be tied up,’ she explains.
…One of the most poignant box comes from Cuban artist ….Its title is “No Escape is Possible.”
….Ciel Bergman’s “Grief Repair” contains wax with blood behind it, threads and a needle. She calls it a metaphor for the efforts of women all over the world to heal, to keep communities whole, “despite a world which seems eternally based on war and conflict.”
The Community Outreach
Singapore!!!
….Workshops for women, men, and children …..
….school outreach, K-12, Grrrls Beyond Borders, Girls Inc. etc, …..Montana!
…Museum in Missoula, Montana. This was the most comprehensive exhibition in the USA since the 2001-02 WBB retrospective. A school outreach-project involved 1200 fifth graders
The International Dialog
…. global dialog via the Internet and international travel of the boxes (and sometimes their makers and curators)
….….WBB website, virtual exhibition, e-mail dialog
……Cultural Olympiad, Salt Lake City, VSA….Children Beyond Borders
Section 3: Impact Of The Artwork
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Where and when was the artwork shown? How many people have viewed it?
Women Beyond Borders has an extensive, fifteen-year exhibition history, and groups of boxes (anywhere from 10 to 200) have been shown in nearly 50 venues in over 30 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and the US. For a complete exhibition history, please refer to Women Beyond Border’s resume attached.
Women Beyond Borders exhibitions have been viewed in the numerous exhibition venues and alternative spaces around the world as well as on the Internet by approximately 15 Million viewers.
How did the artwork make a difference to the community?
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Open society: Accessibility through travel and Internet…., global outreach…..sister projects…Children Beyond Borders….
FIRSTS! Art by women: Kenya, Oaxaca!
…Cuba blockade …..
Singapore….communities
School outreach! VSA
….2006: Over 50 boxes created by Tutsi widows of the Rwanda genocide in collaboration with Betsy Kain and Solace Ministries. The boxes and statements reflect the atrocities and immense personal hardship these women experienced.
