1. Objectifs

Intentions :
«Examining the practices of contemporary [two] artists [...], this thesis explores how imagined realities fit into to the processes of memory, and what their implications are for post-Holocaust art and life. The relationship between memory and the construction of personal identity is also taken up here, with a questioning of how memory (including imaginatively-mediated memory) becomes involved in the processes of personal, familial and cultural identification.» (p. iii)

Questions/Hypothèses :
«[I]n the context of contemporary art production: how is the Holocaust remembered now? Further, what are the different types of remembering that subsequent generations are engaging with?» (p. 5)

2. Méthode

Échantillon/Matériau :
L’auteure analyse un corpus d’œuvres de deux artistes contemporains, Rafael Goldchain et Angela Grossmann. Les œuvres sont principalement des photos et des peintures.

Type de traitement des données :
Réflexion critique

3. Résumé

According to the author, «[b]oth artists look back to a past that has been complicated and obscured by the traumas and the consequences of genocide. Goldchain is explicit about the familial framework through which he examines this past and the processes of self-identification that are central to his project. Grossmann is reluctant to acknowledge associations of her work with her family’s fate that has also been drastically altered by the events of the Holocaust. But considering her work in relation to Goldchain’s practice suggests that her aesthetic choices have indeed been influenced by a familial and cultural history that is too weighty too ignore. […] Hirsch’s notion of postmemory proposes a form of remembering situated in between memory and imagination that defines the memorial experience of the children of Holocaust survivors. The mediation of generational traumatic memories is central to Hirsch’s model, suggesting that the acknowledgment of inherited familial, cultural and collective traumas is a necessary part of mourning and working through. […] Hirsch, Family Frames, […] explorations are part of the process of mourning losses – of family, of identity – and of working through trauma. She also notes [for] generations that follow [the survivors], a (re)building of identity in relation to familial and cultural pasts, through the complex interactions of memory and imaginative creation, is a necessary part of our own repairing.» (p. 49-51)