Guardians & Protectors/Animals & Furniture (2024)
Drawing from incomplete family archives, historical research, I explore the impacts and confluence of antisemitism and misogyny, internalized oppression, generational trauma and assimilation on Jewish women and their families within the diaspora.
Through various iterations of paper mache, I embed the Judensau (a degrading caricature depicting a female pig being suckled by smaller Jews, prevalent in public and private spaces throughout Germany from the 13th to 19th centuries) into peeling walls and furniture, investigating the effects of trauma and oppression as a part of our everyday: a constant presence yet easy to overlook.
The walls and furniture house Adele, a mythical matriarch inspired by my research into incomplete family archives on my mother’s side. Part worm, displaying both masculine and feminine gendered characteristics, she is earthy, sexual, fleshy, inherently sinful, often charged with the task of assimilation and blamed for it.
Both imprisoned by and creator of the space she inhabits, Adele obsessively embeds the Judensau into the walls and subsequently attempts to conceal its presence through layers of paint and paper. In collages that combine family photos and self portraits with Judensau broadsides, new associations emerge: playful and fanciful, my ancestors and myself ride the female pigs and play hide and seek within fantastical interiors and landscapes.
Frenetically, Adele rocks Moritz, her male burden, to a haunted lullaby that vacillates between a mournful reminder of what was left behind, a hollow attempt at conformity, and a warning from the future.
She hands off her burden to the audience in an attempt to be free from the weight of motherhood, its responsibilities and often unrequited love.
