Art and memory : the presence of the absent : a creative project / by Irit Itzhaky Magnes.

Holocaust second-generation Jewish artists and dramatists explore the Shoah as a reality they did not experience. Their artistic expression is the mediated confrontation between their familiar present and their unknown past, an imagined space, the meeting place. This fictional artistic space, subjected to the inner logic and force of the artwork, invites the viewer to relate to the artwork with his own response. Remembrance through mourning returns to the original site of the atrocities and provides a safe psychological space for grief and healing. Hence, remembrance becomes the task of understanding identity and ethnicity and forming a chain of continuity between the generations. The series of paintings Elemer and Netty is based on memories that were not experienced first hand, rather re-imagined. The paintings suggest the process of memory; they combine fragments of family history, period photographs, and papier-mâché. The paintings become a memorial site, a meeting place, a space to preserve memory with contemporary insight.