Time With Monuments
Time with Monuments is a response to the experience of being in public spaces that are intended to memorialize sites of immense human suffering. While at an artist residency at WIRWIR in Berlin, I visited ten different monuments, all part of Germany's notable ‘Erinnerungskultur’ – ‘culture of memory’, which is at the core of their national identity. While visiting the sites, I sat with the heavy vibrations, and examined the formal and spatial choices used to remember those persecuted under the Nazi regime. Being a foreigner from the US, I had the splitscreen experience of both feeling the heavy atmosphere while simultaneously appreciating Germany's commitment to confronting and taking responsibility for its historic sins, something the US has generally been unwilling to do with its own violent histories. Germany’s success with memorializing its history, creating monuments that educate and hold space for reflection, allows for a metabolizing of its past, providing potential healing for both the perpetrator and victim.
Synthesizing the experience through paint, water, collage and paper, I focused on the objective facts about what happened, often in the exact place the monument was located, while tapping into my intuitive and emotional responses to the monuments. The process was a form of integrating and remembering Germany’s history, as well as my own experiences there, through the process of painting.
