Shadows and reflections / by Marleene Rubenstein

The work created for Shadows and Reflections received its creative impetus from a family photograph taken in 1938 in Poland and sent to America before the Holocaust. The series brought about in response to it utilized mixed media to create installations and artist's books that traced absence and memory.The manifestation of subtle interfaces such as reflection, scent, sound, etc. were important aspects of the various pieces, such as in Touch, Skins, and Lamentation, and served to function as stimuli to the memory process. The viewer was thus presented with a varied sensory experience that extended the primary modality of the visual. The concepts of slippage and temporality were evidenced by this ephemeral context as well as by the blurring of photographic reproductions and the recontextualization of objects utilized in the creation of the installations. Gut, hair, ash, and mirror were specifically chosen for their metaphoric abilities to allude to both past historical events as well as to suggest the absent body. Integral to the series was the creation of a metaphysical presence grounded in the present, but referencing the past.