Kim Siebert Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, 1958 Lives in Cape Town,South Africa Training: 1980: BA Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa 1980: H.Dip.Ed. UCT, Cape Town, South Africa 1984: MAFA University of Cape Town, South Africa Recent group exhibition: 1994: EXIT, South African Association of Artists, Cape Town 1993: The Bride in Art, The Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town, South Africa 1992-3: Made in Wood, South African National Gallery Recent articles or books written on the artist's work: 1994: Emma Bedford "Om beslag te le op geslag", Die Suid-Afrikaan, no 49, July/ August pp59-61 1992: Made in Wood, Cape Town, South African National Gallery, pp13-14 and 47 Kim Siebert What did your Mother ever tell you about the Hard Edge School? (1986) collage on masonite 32,2 x 42,6cm Kim Siebert Umdliva Series (1995) 10 terracotta containers and mixed media 22 x 250cm Kim Siebert 4 Women looking at a Picasso and contemplating the ideological differences between art and craft collage on board Siebert is drawn to the constellation of issues around the concepts of maintenance and production. For her many of these crystalised in the 1950s. Never before had so much emphasis been placed on the maintenance of the home and never before the production of so many labour-saving devices. Ironically, while promising to free women from domestic labour these devices actually ensnared women in their homes. One of Siebert's major concerns as an artist is with the division of both domestic labour and artistic creativity into productivity (which is generally considered a male sphere) and maintenance (with which women are usually aligned). Not only are housework and childcare uncreative, in the sense of being demanding without producing anything, but in the process the housewife and mother erases all evidence of her work. Associated with maintenance, women and all their activities have traditionally been characterised as the antitheses of cultural creativity. To understand this work, What did your mother ever tell you about the "Hard Edge" School ?,it is necessary to explore some of its sources which are rooted in American obsessions with styles and consumerism. The history of twentieth- century art has traditionally been viewed as a series of stylistic innovations all of which have been initiated by men. Amongst these developments, which have followed one another in increasingly rapid succession, the Hard Edge School is seen to have arisen as a reaction to Abstract Expressionism. The best-known protagonists of the Hard Edge School were Al Held and Ellsworth Kelly who are often associated with Post-Painterly Abstractionists such as Frank Stella. Hard Edge painters have been variously categorised as a group of precisionists with a predilection for formal order, immaculate surface and flat areas of colour rigidly divide from one another. As such their works epitomise the aesthetic doctrine which eschews all but the narrowest range of strictly pictorial considerations. In contrast to this exclusivity, Siebert's work displays a post-modernist inclusivity of references. While modernist painting sought to divest itself of all that was not essentially pictorial, referentiality and meaning are essential ingredients in Siebert's art. In her reaction to the heroic scale of much modernist art and her choice of 'Low - art' material the artist succeeds in questioning notions both of the artwork as masterpiece and the mastering position of the artist as genius. Her art is more akin to what has been dubbed femmage - a sister concept to modernism's collage or assemblage - which pays homage to the artistry of countless women throughout history who have devoted aesthetic energy to scrapbooks, appliquŽ, photo albums and quilting, well in advance of the Cubist's interest in that particular approach to artistic expression. As a feminist artist Siebert's concerns lie with the exposure of patriarchal practises which perpetuate the subordination of women in society. In contrast to the curious muteness and coolness of Hard Edge School paintings, Siebert's art makes a plea, not only for the reconsideration of women's status in society but for the re-evaluation of women's art.