Doris Bloom

Doris Bloom (b. 1954, Vereeniging, South Africa) studied ceramics and drawing at Johannesburg Art College before relocating to Denmark in 1976 to study at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts with Robert Jacobsen. Her internationally recognized, multidisciplinary practice encompasses painting, printmaking, photography, video art, installation, and performance.

Her work often grapples with apartheid-era memories and the psychological mapping of trauma, expressed through visceral imagery and symbolic motifs. In her 2004 SOD – Myth of Origin and Other African Stories exhibition, she presented sombre photographic tableaux that blurred documentation and performance, alongside expansive paintings dealing with memory, chaos, decay, and rebirth. Studio Stefania Miscetti

Bloom famously collaborated with William Kentridge in the 1995 Projected Artists – Memory and Geography project, creating chalk drawings, land-art films, and installations that explore boundaries of place and personal history.

Her more recent solo exhibition Bird Bone Whistler (2023), mounted at the Origins Centre Museum in Johannesburg, combined performance with multimedia installations to interrogate ancestral memory and archaeological resonance.

Bloom’s work is held in major public collections—including the Johannesburg Art Gallery, South African National Gallery, and Dublin’s Museum of Modern Art—and she has received numerous honours including Denmark’s Lifetime Achievement through the Ministry of Culture.