Review of Art Seen at the Joslyn Museum of Art by Robert Mahoney

“The theme of environmentalism or, at least, the notion of living in the agri-industrial environment of Nebraska, is picked up by Sarah Berkeley, in a video from her I Just Work Here series, where she gets all done up in her officewear war paint, then sits with her legs and red high heels up on her desk by her water cooler out in the middle of a devastated, deforested terrain. Berkeley’s work may well be talking about the land but, if so, that land is also intersected by issues of gender in the workplace. There is even an inkling of critique of the fact that most of the “country” folk of a place like Omaha or Lincoln, however much they have internalized agricultural rhythms in their sense of self, are in fact paper pushers, not farmers. The long-duration nature of Berkeley’s performance is critical to her work and lost on short viewing. While Berkeley’s piece here is fine, I’ve seen this piece projected large scale where the tableau-photography aspect of it greatly adds to its absurdist pathos.”