Ongoingness (2025 - Ongoing)
This body of work grapples with (1) my experience as a third-generation Holocaust survivor, and (2) my despair about the way that Holocaust memorial has been co-opted to attempt to justify unjustifiable violence against others. It is a cruel and unacceptable irony that “never forget” is being used to ensure the ongoingness of exactly the kinds of brutality that were supposed to be suffered never again by anyone.
In my experience, both contemporary Jewish culture and Biblical tradition regard the act of remembering the past as a way to affirm present and future life. I created the work below as part of an exploration of what might happen if we thought about “forgetting” or “letting go” rather than “remembering” or “holding on” as a way to embody love.
Rekuerdo/Olvido Series
I began these pieces by painting with olive oil on newsprint. Olive oil (which my grandparents survived on during the Nazi occupation of Greece, and whose significance in Israel-Palestine you can read about here) makes the paper translucent. I added graphite and paper collage elements and placed the resulting “ephemeral paintings” against a backlit window and photographed them. In some cases, I then digitally layered multiple photographs, taken at different times of day, on top of each other. The text in the pieces is Ladino (also known as Judeo-Spanish), my grandparents’ first language — a language that I have found has more satisfying translations for “to let go” than does Biblical Hebrew.
Olvido/Rekuerdo, 2025. Photograph of ephemeral collage with vegetable oil, graphite, and scotch tape on paper against gloomy-day window.
Rekuerdo/Olvido, 2025. Photograph of ephemeral painting with vegetable oil and graphite on paper against window.
Floating, 2025. Ephemeral collage with paper, sharpie, and olive oil on window.
Floating II, 2025. Composite photograph of olive oil paintings on window.
Sehora III, 2025. Composite photograph of olive oil paintings on window and gouache painting on plexiglass.
Sehora II, 2025. Composite photograph of olive oil paintings on window.
Sehora, 2025. Composite photograph of olive oil paintings on window.
Untitled (Well at night), 2025. Digitally collaged photographs of ephemeral paintings with olive oil, graphite, paper, and window light.
You are not obligated to complete the work / Neither are you free to abandon it, 2025. Composite photograph. The text reads, "No es sovre ti de akabar el trabajo / Tampoko sos livre de abandonarlo," which is a Ladino translation of a verse from Pirkei Avot.
Monument to Forgetting
To create this painting, I drew four places I have called home, from memory, on plywood panels. In painting them, I emphasized the inaccuracies in my remembered versions of these places. The piece is 8 feet high by 2 feet wide, and its shape is inspired by Jochen Gerz and Esther Shalev-Gerz’s 1986 installation “The Monument Against Fascism.”
Monument to Forgetting, 2025. Gouache and oil on plywood, 96" x 24".
Detail: "Remembering/Forgetting AB," 24" x 24" section of full piece.
Detail: "Remembering/Forgetting Gretna Green Way," 24" x 24" section of full piece.
Installation view
Installation view
Installation view with pieces from Rekuerdo/Olvido series
Transmutations
A collection of paintings playing with repetitions in identities, burials, phenotypes, and DNA across time.
Assimilation, 2025. Oil and collage on canvas, 20" x 20".
Us, 2025. Pencil, acrylic medium, and oil on panel, 6" x 6".
My Archaeopteryx, 2025. Pencil, gouache, colored pencil, and oil on panel, 12" x 12".
Archaeopteryx Fossil, 2025. Gouache, pencil, and acrylic on panel, 10" x 8".
She Grows Where She's Planted, 2025. House paint, collage, and oil on panel, 8" x 10.25".
Boy with Dragon Wings, 2025. Oil and collage on panel, 12" x 12".