Narrating Remembrance
"Narrating Remembrance" is
a collection of mixed media drawings exploring personal experience with rising
painful memories in a context of the universal human ability to hide such
histories deep within. Thus, recently some of my recollections came more consciously
to the surface as I remembered a darker side of my childhood: the painful
persecution that my Jewish Dissident family had to go through while I was
growing up in Soviet Russia. I
remembered general and minute anti-Semitic acts, attitudes and their
repercussions, that involved painfully subtle but directly influential daily
harassment, discrimination, and oppression. I have been so lucky to emigrate to
US at seventeen and hid the entire painful Soviet, anti-Semitic, lacking
realities deep under hundreds of mental folds.
From my childhood impressions, it seems, I have only kept the youthful
happy feel, filled with love and support of my family. Deep ethnic connections, faith and prayer
have been a thread of hope throughout these times. I do not know what triggered the folds to
unravel but I have been “unraveling” my memories and finding all of the small
and big pains and fears rise to the surface, as the Soviet realities have been
spilling from my mind’s depths.
In this body of work I have enjoyed
expressing my love of drawing and an appreciation of its simple tools and
materials, which allow me to reproduce dream bodies and wrap them up in
imaginary folds. These forms are reflective
of specific emotions as a memory and not always as a specific event: the images
are of an adult appearing a witness to intense feelings of a child from a
distant past. The imaginary bodies are somewhat stiff, unnatural and isolated,
reflecting on the inner state of fright and tension. The tightly wrapped
figures echo political binds, while also a feeling of being enclosed within
one’s own fears and cautions – I still find myself looking twice to see if
anyone is following and am terrified of hearing the phone or the door bell
ring.
As I wrap the drawn bodies in the
imaginary cloth, with each fold I remember, forgive and commiserate with
personal and collective pains of the past; by unraveling the folds I “expose”
and “loosen” personal histories so closely intertwined with the histories of
others. Adding actual cloth ties the
drawn women with this reality. The knots
of threads, the strips, bulks and folds of fabrics, the layers of boards, are
expressions of accumulated strata of life’s minute and general, inner and outer
occurrences, accumulations, recollections, tied within, tied without, untied,
unraveled and interwoven with the present and future. The colors of the cloth represent flesh and
soul, pain and fear, hope and freedom, and are found and refurbished pieces of fabric. Poking paper with a sharp needle and bringing
the thread through is as enjoyable to me as marking the paper with soft core of
the pencil. Sewing reminds me of mending
and holding things together in daily life. With these drawings I unravel the
past onto the paper, while trying not to stay too tied up by its bonds.
Life
Paused: Women and Wars
My work explores these concepts by
reflecting on personal empathies with most recent meditation on Life Paused: Women and Wars. In the face
of war perpetuated terror, women continue to give birth, to nurture and to
sustain life, to only see that same life disintegrate through the loss of their
families, the fall of their own bodies through shameful hurts or through
displacement. In this work I strive to
translate the intensity of pain forced on women during war to allow for
sympathetic reflection on the topic in a viewer.
Intensity of the subject matter
dictates the choice for my materials: wood resembles life easily destroyed by
fire; thread reflects on life’s passages: broken but possibly mended. My “canvas” is often created as a collage of
ripped and sewn paper and/or fabric. My
fabric choices tend to reflect the airy qualities that allow for light
penetration. A work is often incepted as
such a collage of paper and/or fabric resulting in a unique shape and
structure. In the process of sewing it together
I contemplate the subject matter and the image.
Thread has become an important element in my work representing both
linear and drawn elements, as well as the conceptual and textural structure it
offers to the work. The process of
making, undoing and mending references tragedy and coping. Textile
elements and drawn bodies are sewn together then layered with thread and found
objects. In the end, a figurative image
drawn on paper or cloth is often altered through ripping or cutting and sewn
again forming a metamorphosed body.
Although, some works portray figures drawn in a detailed and careful
manner to reflect beauty of and regard for a female body in spite of of her
wounds.
The making of this work allows me
to step outside of my habitual self and I hope will inspire a viewer for
empathetic contemplation as well.
Politics of Motherhood: Maternal Domains
My recent status change from a woman to a mother has
opened doors into a rich subject matter where I am able to explore philosophical
and spiritual sides of motherhood as well as its daily societal politicization
and invasion through a prism of personal experiences.
My creative process starts with a memory of my body in
labor or while nursing my children. This
particular bodily image then transforms into a visual portrayal of that intense
emotional state as a drawing of a life-size figure in a pose reflective of that
memory on paper, board or cloth. An archive of various cloths that I have
collected over time serves as a pool of inspiration for my work as well. Sometimes I start a specific work by altering
a piece of cloth through slashing and mending each piece using a variety of
methods such as ripping, cutting, burning, weaving and sewing and then work
with the emerging forms corresponding to the particular emotional state. In order to connect the transformed cloth with
the drawn image I often use a range of threads as a drawing material by
weaving, tying, sewing with or knitting.
Some works also incorporate altered personal clothing items worn by
myself and by my children. Esoterically speaking, cloth and clothing cover human body as a second skin to provide warmth, protection, as well as symbolize care and nurture. A woman’s body acts as such catalyst towards her baby through bodily processes of conception, pregnancy, and lactation, in addition to physical and emotional forms of nurture in general. Thus, in the Maternal Body I also investigate maternal intimacy and sensuality. These principles often express themselves as a range of contrasting inner qualities such as love and hate, calm and fury, gentleness and harshness that outwardly might appear as a set of eccentric yet archetypal, paradoxical yet prudent behaviors accepted or rejected by the masses. Thus, a mother figure may emerge as appalling and attractive simultaneously. I try to express this contradictory nature of maternity through juxtaposition of a drawn figure and textile elements thus creating layering that allows one to look inside the drawn body through its many layers – from physical, to psychological, to spiritual. The layers are connected to the drawn bodies by sewing, stapling, or weaving through to reflect on the element of maternal pain, both physical and mental. However, no less important is a constituent of overcoming that pain which acts as a catalyst for a mother’s spiritual growth.
Through the Maternal Domains my intent is also to instigate an awareness of a “maternal body” – pregnant, birthing, lactating, nurturing, suffering, loving - as a normal presence in our culture to be respected and accepted as an individual.
Comments
Post a Comment