“It is not always events that have touched us personally that affect us the most.”

Elie Wiesel, Night

2022 Portfolio, Mixed-Media (pdf) | 2022 Portfolio, Photography (pdf)

For more than 10 years I have been studying and researching genocide. In Sierra Leone, in the Congo, in Rwanda. The Armenians in Turkey. The mass killings of political prisoners in Iran. In Srebrenica, the mass killing of Muslims. And importantly, all over Europe, the Holocaust.

The Holocaust has been the center of my study. Researching the dehumanization of Jewish people and the mass killing that resulted has changed my life, and my art reflects on that change. It does not directly represent the suffering and murder of any one people. You may see that I use elements from World War II. This is not meant to tell a story that is not mine to tell or to appropriate the suffering of a specific people. The art I have created reveals what I have felt during this long education.

I have traveled more than 30,000 kilometers to study of the Holocaust. From Babi Yar in Ukraine to Auschwitz and Majdenak, to the ghettos in Italy, to museums in France, Germany, and the US.

Art has kept me grounded in the face of horror. It keeps me grounded. It shows how I’ve experienced this journey, how I am experiencing the journey. Some of the images are from nightmares, my memories, and my own past. They show my struggle to make sense of all that I have learned and am learning.

Most artists and people who love the arts have experienced something that awakens a surprising knowledge they didn’t know they had. Sometimes it’s music that transports you in time or to a place you’ve never been. Sometimes it’s a painting or a sculpture or a film. There is something in art that makes space for deep emotion and empathy. This is what I explore in this project and why I call it Connecting Memories. The project aims to open that space and to connect the past with the present and the future.

 

2022 Portfolio, Mixed-Media (pdf) | 2022 Portfolio, Photography (pdf)