Date of Award
Spring 5-23-2021
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts (MFA)
Department
Art
Advisor(s)
Clarke, Ann
Second Advisor
Herbig, Dusty
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | Fine Arts
Abstract
As an artist, I explore my family's complicated history of lost Jewish identity and the contrary involvement. I engage in this history by reflecting on the current political climate using an archive developed by my ancestors. I use components of these varying objects, photographs, and writings to deconstruct - utilizing materials and techniques that can be unwound, discolored, or aged to depict, if not honor, the mutable nature of memory. It is the tension within my ancestry that drives me to make work to ensure that genocidal tragedies like the Holocaust do not happen again. I aim to portray the delicacy of both personal and collective memory in regard to genocide, in order to remind the viewer of how easy it is to forget and, inevitably, repeat history. My work questions the ownership of inherited traumas once the original carrier has passed - am I subject to the guilt or innocence of my ancestors?
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Stern, Maya, "Stern in German Means Star, Stern in Yiddish Also Means Star" (2021). Theses - ALL. 590.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/590
