THEISIS
Context
p.4 Introduction
p.7 Loss and Trauma
p.9 Doris Salcedo
p.14 Edita
p.16 Cristina
p.18 Studio Practice
p.20 Adrian Ghenie
p.32 Conclusion
Introduction
I have chosen as my subject loss, trauma and its place within contemporary art. I think this subject is particularly relevant to my studio practice because of my own background. I was born in Romania, shortly before the Revolution, and the violence and instability of that region is necessarily an integral part of who I am.
I am particularly interested therefore in discovering how the traumatic happenings of these times have sewn their way into the minds of artists and creatives, and since then have grown and dispersed into a generation compelled to represent through art a need to never forget the past.
After the fall of communism in 1989, Eastern Europe was left disfigured and shattered. All infrastructures had been obliterated, everything had collided and all that was left was a mentality of disconnection, a lack of identification and a conscious stream of sorrow throughout the region.
I visited Romania only a matter of weeks go for a trip to help stimulate this piece of writing and I also spent a month there in the Summer of 2011. From these visits, it has become abundantly clear to me that while there have been some signs of slow rehabilitation, there remains a very real sense of neglect and an inability to progress, even after 23 years. I have this theory that when the Iron Curtain fell, those countries involved were propelled into a state of urgency in order to seek help and transformation from the more stable Western economy. It seems to me that the countries further away from Central Europe were left out, and the countries within the Balkan Corridor ended up receiving the least support, due to their geographical location. Countries such as Romania and Bosnia suffered loss and trauma on a massively larger scale than, say, Poland and Hungary. It was a sort of first come first served system – on the European landmass, where a country is located at a specific time in history is usually the deciding factor in its fate.
It was not just Eastern Europe who were to suffer by the collapse of the Iron Curtain. Western Europe had now lost its alternative – in other words, there was no longer a comparison which made them feel superior. They had nothing to which to favourably compare their own political, economical, and cultural structures. Before then, they had always held a strong sense of their place in the world’s rankings, and I believe they felt vulnerable and unsure on how much help to offer and in whom they could lay their trust.
Western Europe at this time of change was still wrapped up in the drugs/sex/rock ‘n roll culture with a great emphasis on the importance of money. The pop art genre, particularly from America, epitomised this. The slow emergence of Eastern European art unsettled the West and in anticipation of what was to come refocused their concepts towards their own art.
Today, a good example of an Eastern European artist, whose work is of a type which began shaking the West twenty years ago, is Adrian Ghenie - his work I will be referencing. I feel his work represents a very well documented journey of 20th century history, both from second hand sources as well as his own experiences. In Eastern Europe, whatever your background, your status, your experiences, the cause and affect that Communism had, and the inhumane crimes that where poured into so many peoples lives, have became unavoidable.
I find it hard to define art from Eastern Europe in a geographical sense alone as I am completely aware that it was, and still is, work that is unpreventable and the concept of location and who the work was created by should not be questioned, as it is simply not in the control of the artists. How could an artist concentrate his work on anything else when such powerful events surrounded him? The single-minded certainty which gripped Eastern European artists had an undermining effect on Western artists, sapping their confidence. What emerged from this was a multicultural gathering, a compatible grouping of strange people all upon this amplified stage of heightened emotion.
I find the work that I make is a very true attachment to this idea.
Loss and Trauma
“The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there” (Hartley. L P 2000, p.5)
In order to have a true understanding of my identity, it seems of great importance to confront the events and traumas which occurred in my early life. I have always tried to establish in my mind some kind of clearer meaning towards where I fit in, and how it all happened, how certain relationships formed and how others were lost.
My aim is not to gain a fuller understanding of my past, but to achieve a coherent peace with it and within myself, between body and mind. I wish to grow away from this stagnant idea of how up until now I have lived, perceived and acted towards my past, and through these difficulties evoke a direction forward. The fear of abandonment holds the biggest control over me, when trying to build any sense of belonging and commitment with people. This fear is not apparent on a day-to-day basis, but these are issues that have been following along side me silently parallel with every relationship in which I have ever immersed myself, in a very uncontrollable way.
By addressing key definitive memories that I believe to trigger and dislodged myself into feelings of abandonment and unease, I have begun to resurrect and analyse them through my own visual language to uncover how they exist, why do they still exist, and why is there such a necessity and need for them to play an on going role in my life.
I feel I have developed recently a visual relationship through art by having a more mature outlook towards my past. By recognising that everything has a place, and by partially isolating the sadness and trauma of the past, I am able to concentrate instead on the beauty and positive side of situations which have occurred. I now create imagery, in which I can find a gain, and hopefully the viewers will obtain an insight into themselves and their own difficulties – this way, the trauma has served a useful purpose.
Whilst formulating a combination of imagination and influence, I ask is it the reality of a trauma in its clearest form of time and happening, and is there a right way for it to be represented in art? Alternatively, can that moment never be re found in the same way and be as powerful? Can there be more power within an image that has been purely extracted from reality into a continuing memory with in your mind? In that memory, does the growing nature of time dislocate it from what it truly was into something different and variable? Alternatively, is there a way in which loss and trauma can be represented less personally and more obliquely?
To think of a singular moment in time, something can be traumatic but as time passes - certain feelings and memories dissolve, sounds fade. Where do they go? Through my paintings, I would like to offer them a space where they can come and go. In the past, my paintings have tended to be directly effected by such traumas as isolation, abandonment and rejection. The effect of this can be to create another dimension to the trauma that plays a more visually potent image and can exaggerate and distort the truth of the original trauma.
Doris Salcedo
“I believe that the major possibilities of art are not in showing the spectacle of violence but instead in hiding it…. it is the proximity, the latency of violence that interests me.” (Princenthal, N. et al. 2000: p.40)
Although unconnected to Eastern Europe, I find the work of Doris Salcedo very relevant. Also, her very evident empathy to the Romanian poet Paul Celan (1920-1950) feels particularly relevant to me. Paul Celan was a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust.
Her work does not appear as visually the most obviously connected work to my own practice. However, there is an important connection in her reasons for making her work. I believe what she does so affectively is to fluently infuse together a heightened sense of memory, grief and trauma. She develops these on an open level yet what captivates me most is the way she explores the relationship between artist and viewer, the conscientious journey to explore the trauma that belongs to others yet she develops the work as a secondary witness.
It is as if she positions herself as an extension of the trauma; her response to these acts of violence become approachable in her choice of displaying easily relatable objects within her sculptural installations. Salcedo undertakes a confrontation with inhumane acts of tragedy in what I observe to be a less harmful representation of evil. It triggers a less intensifying reaction and the work sustains an overwhelming concern for humanity as a whole, a belief that however treacherous and unspeakably malicious the state and depth to which a human being can sink, it needs to be recognised.
Her work implies, I feel, an importance to never forget. The victims who are on the end of these horrific acts of violence. She breathes a whispering hope; through viewing her installations, an understanding, a readdressing of injustice buries it self into your skin. She telepathically channels a very strong value of human life into you. I grasp this idea and however far removed the experiences she talks about are from my own, it evokes very similar responses emotionally. The work could easily belong to other countries where atrocities have taken place - Romania, Yugoslavia?
I cannot help but pay attention to the links between the stories about which she so honestly tells us and certain events that have happened to me personally, I began to look for my own story within her work. This journey to find myself in somebody else’s work is something that I have never experienced before with art. I knew it was there though.
The Orphan’s Tunic
The artist’s work, The Orphan’s Tunic, tells a story. This sculpture provides everything I was looking for. It touched me in a way that it felt like I was the orphan in the story behind the work, and the trauma was mine. All that belongs to the work and holds the exact responsive feeling as to how I view my own story and traumas. The difference is that Salcedo has found a physical form to represent them, she has carefully undertaken the story of the orphan and has responded to it in her own way but has shown nothing but respect and delicacy towards the subjects.
The Story Behind the Orphan’s Tunic
Salcedo tells it – “it was the story of a girl from an orphanage, a six year old who had witnessed her mother’s killing. Ever since that traumatic experience, she had worn the same dress day after day, a dress her mother had made for her shortly before being killed.” (Princenthal, N. et al. 2000: p96)
The sculpture takes the form of two tables overlapping, representing mother and daughter, and is threaded together with human hair and bound with the silk tunic. Both the hair and the wood of the tables are material residues from formerly living organisms. The hair is fragile, thin and vulnerable while the wood of the table is sturdy and strong, yet both are arrested in their development. The tables have been mutilated and the hair threaded through thousands of holes drilled in their surfaces. Is this an attempt to mend or does the hair represent the threading of pain? The tables overlap in a way which suggests support, as in a family, but is the family broken beyond repair or is it a resurrection and tribute to their lives? The Orphan’s Tunic is about memory, memory at the edge of an abyss. The use of the word ‘tunic’ adds an important layer. The word is taken from an untitled poem by the Romanian poet, Paul Celan - an orphaned poem, as it were.
“Night rode him, he had come to his senses,
the orphan’s tunic was his flag…
it is as though…
the so-ridden had nothing on
but his first birth-marked,
secret-speckled skin.” (Princenthal, N. et al. 2000: p87)
The title stirs the imagination and makes you feel mysteriously haunted in some way; it becomes a piece of work that grows. The longer I find myself enduring the it, the more I feel its presence, it matures. I find myself contemplating my own existence and it becomes a compulsion to keep transfixed and engaged. I gain from the sculpture, while muted in awe, a certain peace and sympathy for humanity.
I find the association between Salcedo’s sculpture and Celan’s poetry very moving, and her appreciation of him is best summed up by this quotation from a conversation with Carlos Basualdo:
“Celan’s poetry involves piecing together from ruptures and dissociations, rather than association and union. This is the way I approach sculpture. I concern myself with the disassembled and the diachronic.” (Princenthal, N. et al. 2000: p.26)
Edita
I have four sisters. Here are the stories of two of them.
I met my sister, Edita, for the first time on a cold November evening in 1992. It was during the height of the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. My mother brought her out of Bosnia and she arrived in our Oxfordshire home, a small bundle wrapped in a pink blanket.
Edita had lost everything - her sight, her hearing, and her family, even her identity. She had nothing. Across her forehead was a semi-healed scar which ran from just above her nose to her hairline. It was caused by three shotgun pellets which had ripped into her tiny brain. The pellets came from the mortar shells that the Serbs had thrown into a garage full of women and children, including Edita's mother and six year old brother. Everyone died except for two babies - one of whom being Edita.
The outlook for Edita was grim - the neurosurgeon said she would never walk, talk, read, write...live any sort of normal life, the loss was total.
Fourteen years later, I walked beside her as we climbed the hill to the graveyard in the village of Hrustovo, which had been Edita's Bosnian home. Surrounded by surviving relatives, she stood in front of the graves of her mother, father and brother and for the first time since the massacre, the little family were reunited.
Loss and trauma - there can hardly be a greater horror inflicted on the life of a two month old baby than what happened to Edita...and yet, today she can see, hear, walk, talk, she can read and write, drive a car, hold down a job, live an independent life in a flat of her own...and the scar on her adult face is barely noticeable to the casual observer, a symbol of what she has achieved since that moment of total loss.
I became very aware while standing in that Bosnian graveyard of the possibilities of identity and belonging. It was the moment when I first seriously confronted my own story, and I felt at the time a wave of guilt when I realized that I was becoming absorbed by my loss rather than Edita’s. I was watching her go through this huge ordeal but my immediate response was to trigger thoughts of my own life, not hers.
I wonder about the difference between us - Edita lost all of her birth family, my mother is still alive somewhere and I have yet to meet her. I have a relationship with my two birth sisters but we did not grow up as siblings. Our trauma is the same, it is our loss which is different.
Cristina
I have only one vague memory of Romania, two emotionally evaporating relationships with my sisters, some lose stories that I am sure have lost their truth, and my ‘Precious Box’ of belongings and photographs. This is all I know and own of my past.
This memory that I can only describe as dim, is more like a morphing image that it is a constant image. I feel strongly that I should never give up on it, or conceive the idea that it is a product of my craving to connect to the past and therefore is just a figment of my imagination. As this is my one and only visual connection that I can distinguish to be true, I must hold on to it.
I hear nothing but I am crying, my face immovable from the mattress and I lie in a thick oily liquid streaming from my nose. The light is too murky to establish any recognition of location. Along side me there is another body, also appearing to be in distress. There is this dark motion, a scuffling of people hanging over me from above.
The image passes with such speed that the ability to identify with these figures is near impossible but there is a real sense of belonging to these figures. Instinctively, I am drawn to the concept that the figure lying with me is my sister Cristina who, I have been told, I shared a cot with when in the orphanage.
Since we were taken from our shared cot in that Romanian orphanage – and separated, we have struggled to maintain a relationship. As children we met occasionally but Cristina’s adoptive parents would only allow us to meet if we pretended to be cousins.
All that changed on a wooden bench, overlooking a beautiful valley in central Sicily one afternoon in August 2007, when she learnt that we were brother and sister.
So, the loss should have ended there, but it did not. There was no shared childhood, of course, but it was not that simple. It is now approaching seven years since I last saw her and only small communication have been made. I understand she struggles in her own way and is deeply confused as to who she is, tormented by the same confusion as me, I imagine. There is in our relationship, this vaguely shaped guilt about leaving one other and this precarious bond we share has been stretched as we begin developing as are own people. I have distanced myself as I am aware that at this stage in her life, (she is now twenty five), I might jeopardize her growth as her own self. I need to take into account that she has been raised differently from me and is not so well informed about her past or her country of birth as I am. I see no need to inject my own insecurities into her, as it will only multiply whatever presence of trauma that she herself also experiences.
“Not flesh of my flesh, not bone of my own but still miraculously my own.
Do not forget, not for one minuet.
You were born not under my heart but in it.” (Source Unknown)
These fragile ties make me question whether I am Romanian anymore? Is this a label I can still consider to associate with myself? These are just some of the constant questions I ask myself.
Studio Practice
In my mind, the paintings that I make act as mirrors, but only mirrors that can be viewed in clarity by myself. They are reflections, which portray in their purest form a world where I can see what I was, what I have become and what the future may hold for me. They develop a portal for me to formulate and control those negative traumas that hang over me. I manifest them into a world alongside reality. It is through painting that I can discuss and conclude these grey pockets of the world with which I struggle to communicate. The loss that is always present in the relationship between my sisters and myself is a trauma I can deal with within the boundaries of painting.
The most genuine connection I have with painting is the intrinsic power it holds over me, as well as the ability to metamorphosis to the viewers’ imagination and relieve them of any hidden uncertainties within themselves. A silent communication between the maker, the image and the viewer exercises this common thought that you are never alone with trauma. I believe there is something quite settling about this recognition and acceptance that as humans we will suffer.
Painting opens up a boundless outlet for people to confide in, it can cater for everybody. However for myself as the maker, it also gives me a sense in which it feels like a painting is a living thing; the way in which it breathes in a space, its ability to set a tone, its smell, its texture and its appearance. In my opinion, every experience I share with each individual painting that I create becomes one of a kind - a relationship which is built unlike any human tie but contains similarities as in the way you have this feeling of protection over it, as you would for a child.
I believe a painting asks nothing of you except for you to exist alongside it; perhaps it is this peaceful thought, this mutual respect which acts as a soothing therapy, a state of complete compatibility and security is achieved. It is this feeling of unconditional trust that can never be emulated in any form of human connection.
Adrian Ghenie
I chose to study the work of Adrian Ghenie because he is a fellow Romanian, because he is a victim of post Communism and I believe his work covers not just his own loss and trauma, not just his countries, but documents the whole of humanity’s struggles, specifically throughout the 20th century.
I flew out to Romania to see him by appointment on the 11th January. 2013. Initially I stayed in a cheap hotel in Bucharest and on the 14th I took a 10-hour train to the northern city of Cluj-Napoca to meet Adrian. He did not want to be recorded so here I have documented various conversations that occurred during the day that I spent with him.
We began our conversation in his studio. He has two chairs, a red and a green one, which flicker abstractedly through out his paintings. I sat in the red one which, recognising from his work, I found a rather surreal experience. He sat in the green one, he always does. The chairs come from his grandfather’s old home in Russia and act as a kind of family signature.
We were surrounded by his work in progress, the space true to everything that is him. It breathes a space of solitude, of hibernation, of isolation - a place that belongs intimately to him and him only. While superficially, he appears to be a very outgoing person, he is acutely aware of the darker side of humanity and craves his privacy.
I was expecting an interview with an artist and came away with the story of a human being. The flow of conversation started very slowly, stilted small talk mainly. I was overawed by him, by his work, by his studio – we reclined in the iconic chairs, cigarettes in hand, cigarette buts all over the floor, beer bottles dotted around, thousands of half empty coffee mugs, pallets of paint, collages of his ideas scattered everywhere – it felt wonderful. I knew if ever I reached his position and was visited by someone like me, this was everything I would aspire to achieve.
He asked me why I had decided to visit Romania. I explained that I had chosen him as an artist to be a subject in my dissertation, but very quickly and uncontrollably this tumbled into the story of my family. I wearily told him of my background and felt very exposed, speaking so freely to him when I hardly knew him. Then we started talking about his family. As a boy he grew up near the Ukrainian border, his father a Russian, his mother a Romanian. He lived with his grandparents in a very secluded part of Romania, called Baia Mare, with few opportunities, his only knowledge of the outside world were stories of his grandparents’ adventures. His grandfather told of fighting in Stalingrad and his grandmother told romantic tales of how they met. He explained even though it was the 1980’s, he grew up in the life style of the 1950’s, even the house was decorated in ‘50’s style. He remembers enjoying the simplicity - his grandmother still owned the same pair of shoes that she had worn 20 years before.
These experiences obviously helped evolve him into a young man but finally he became tired of this small town. He desired an adventure of his own and said “I wanted to travel to the places I had read about in books, I wanted to find magic.” Having moved to Cluj-Napoca to seek education, he spoke of his time at art school. He was in his early twenties and it was the post-Ceausescu era. I explained the structure of art school in England, the dream to become the successful artist, the curriculum playing a huge part in this, the discipline necessary - in order to be successful you have to work hard. He refers to his experience as the opposite, nobody cared for traditionalism or Western methods, the tutors gave no true input, it was a place where no one cared what anybody did - a place with no boundaries. Everybody just made work. Grades, competition, and money where not relevant. He said a very “fuck you, fuck it, attitude” which in its own way was quite liberating.
He left art school and gave up painting for two years, his only other interest was history obsessed as he was with human beings and the events that defined the 20th century. He wanted to find some interest that could go along side his personal experiences but it took him a long time to discover what that combination was. We spoke about one of his early paintings, Fig 2: ‘If You Open It You Get Dirty’ (2006), a painting of Stalin’s tombstone, the lid has been slightly altered to suggest an escape of some kind, a ghost perhaps? The image was manipulated through collage - he had turned the image around and introduced as if on a fireplace, a vent that collected ash. He described this piece of work as the beginning, a moment where he figured a way to make an image, taking a story from an historical event and planting a suggestion of his presence as well as illustrating his unique style of paint application. I quote he said; “I do not believe in creativity, it is something that is made up through the process”, also stating that “there is no such thing as figurative painting” although his paintings do suggest a strong sense of figure. He then went on to say that “all figures should be abstracted”.
“Ghenie reminds us that these are figures, not people: and the painted remain just that.”. (Coomer, M. 2008, p.22)
It is memory which provokes abstraction in a visual form, and that if a painting isn’t made with abstraction in mind. It serves no purpose, “an image that is recreated is one that has already been created” meaning the work has to have a new meaning from the reality of the subject.
He feels that he is fortunate to have lived in some way through two generations before him and a constant feeling of time is imbedded in his skin. Throughout his upbringing, as much as he had the need to escape his rural Romanian youth, for his attachment and curiosity to explore he can never abandon his roots.
A conversation began where we discussed identity. He felt it took him a long time before he realised he was Romanian. Growing up he never could feel Romanian because during the Communist rule nobody had a voice, and his ties with Russia always tainted his sense of being Romanian. At some point he revealed to me his sexuality – he is gay. I can imagine an exploration into oneself on this level must have magnified his sense of uncertainty when trying to find a place of belonging. It was only quite recently after his recognition in the art world was established and after being given the opportunity to travel, the dream that he had always wanted to fulfil came true. He found that it was only through his absence from Romania, that he had a true acknowledgement of being Romanian. It was something of which he felt he was not in control, saying: “Where you grow up as a child that is where you are from, It does not matter where you are born or where you feel most comfortable living”. Adrian went on to say your childhood carves the most crucial components of you, you are the most free in thought and imagination and that is who you really are; it a time of honest creation.
In much of his work, Adrian goes to some lengths to conceal his Romanian origins. For example when depicting evil, his images are often surreal. However, in the preparatory piece for the painting entitled, Fig: 3 ‘The Boogeyman’ (2010) the evil at last takes on human form in the person of Ceausescu’s. Fig: 4 ‘Study for Boogeyman’ also (2010). The result of this very definitive study is transferred into a shadowy figure in the main work, which could represent any mythical figure of evil, yet from the Study, we know the origins. Adrian is acknowledging the evil done to his country by the dictator who ruled with such violence over so many years.
Adrian’s attitude to his country becomes more understandable when you look at the climate in which he grew up and the passing of boyhood into adolescence very much adjacent to the fall of communism, both crossing paths at the same time.
“ (He was twelve years old when the regime fell) was marked by the disintegration of communism. In these bare facts we become alerted to the expression, or suppression, of a kind of trauma that might provide an activating context for some of Ghenie’s decision making. While the urge to revisit is palpable in Ghenie’s art, the restless nature of his work acts as an analogy for a search for identity.” (Coomer, M. 2008, p.24)
At this point in the conversation, Adrian asked me how I would place myself - as Romanian or English. His view that childhood cemented a sense of belonging confused me greatly at the time. Here I was in Romania and wanting to be a part of it all, and feeling a part of it all, and his view undermined my confidence as to where I stood. I could easily emphasise with his theory but at the same time, it made me feel vulnerable and unsure. It made me wonder why I was there, and if I even had a right to be there.
Later, when I was alone, I looked very carefully at my life. Romania has been such a brief period of my existence and is always something that is clouded by uncertainty and vagueness. England is probably the most compatible label for the time being. It might be different if I spoke Romanian or had lived in the country for any length of time. However, I do feel that too much reliance on patriotism fuels more negativity than positivity; the obsession with your country, your land, your flag, your religion – these things make men behave with territorial greed which results in disembodied acts of inhumanity.
Adrian’s painting entitled: Fig: 5 ‘The Collector 2’ (2008), depicts Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe during the Second World War. He is shown holding two paintings whilst looking on to another with avarice. His greed for the paintings, the greed he demonstrated in his life for power and even food, is shown in this painting – he always wants more. “He sacrificed his humanity for his obsession.” (Neal, J, 2010. p.69) This sacrifice, I believe, is the direct result of attaching himself to a powerful object. In no way am I saying it is wrong to be proud of attaching yourself to an entity such as patriotism or religion, as they can create a great deal of good, I just think it is potentially precarious - some minds do not have the stability to stay in control of such things.
The conversation then turned to West versus East. Adrian began talking about his forthcoming show in New York in April. He has visited America a number of times and his view is that America is a place of great opportunity yet he struggles to gain anything from the people. He feels there is no sense of true loss in their eyes, no real tragedy to place next to their material success. He announced “Romanian people live in a mentality where it is a good thing to fail, to be the biggest loser. Romanian people are very good at being losers. It holds no importance if you succeed, what counts is how hard you fail, you eventually die and your success will die too.”
He mentioned 9/11. America is a relatively new world country, created with the ethos that you must be successful. The tragedy of 9/11 sent a shock that rippled a wave of fear throughout the world. For the Americans this degree of loss was an entirely new experience, but twelve years on, no lessons seem to have been learned and they have returned to their old ways where success is king. What divides West and East is not money nor political status but the way in which each react to trauma.
The Eastern world has suffered far more yet still stands; the countries’ search for rehabilitation maybe solitary and have the effect of alienating themselves but they stand enriched - the understanding that good can leak through even after the most horrifying events. It is more stimulating in Adrian’s eyes to see something of beauty spectacularly crumbling than to remain standing in success.
Adrian’s attitude to America is well illustrated in his portrait of, Fig: 6 ‘Self portrait (Elvis)’ (2009), which is in fact a self-portrait, his father having been an Elvis impersonator and looking very much like his son.
“Ghenie’s amusing yet derisive self portrait as a decidedly unhip on stage Elvis suggests that the young art stars occupying a space in the lives and courts of the new super-rich have become ‘acts’ in themselves.” (Neal, J, 2010. p.70)
I asked Adrian about the winter of 1989, through the eyes of a twelve-year-old boy. He described the family in the week leading up to Christmas, sitting around the table preparing to eat. It was a time before the Internet and they were living in a Communist state where the media through newspapers, radio and television were controlled and phone calls were monitored very carefully. Trust no one was the mentality. The family, through word of mouth, had heard that there were demonstrations in neighbouring towns; “possibly powerless guerrilla movements run by students or bohemian hippie types, nothing serious or worth considering that anything would happen.”
Returning to the table, he remembers everybody talking when his elderly grandmother suddenly muttered, ‘do you hear that?’ Everybody dismissed the comment, she repeated it again with more conviction – ‘do you here that?’ Everybody stopped – silence - in the background the radio played a Christmas song, it did not last long and once again propaganda radio continued. ‘It’s a sign,’ his grandmother said, ‘something is happening.’ She had not heard a religious Christmas song in forty years. They sat glued to the radio for the remainder of the evening. Several hours later Adrian noticed the name ‘Jesus Christ’, a word he had not heard or read in any form of media before. Something was happening, they rushed to the television. Ceausescu’s final speech was about to take place, nobody thought anything unusual was about to happen “Ok he’s still in power, he’s there doing a speech.”… But as the speech unravelled, Communism fell in Romania.
Reflecting on these precious memories that were shared with his family, I believe they are evoked through the painting, Fig: 7 ‘Secret Nativity’ (2007). This painting retains a visually simplistic secrecy, an intimacy that becomes an offering, a sanctuary to relive the traumas of that time and display them in a form of unity.
“Adrian Ghenie’s painting Secret Nativity (2007) was inspired in part by the artist grandmother, a devoutly religious women who, during the communist era in Ghenie’s native Romania, maintained the tradition of Christmas by holding a small, covert celebration in the basement of her house” (Coomer, M. 2008, p.21)
Conclusion
In the writing of this piece, a development of thought has arisen when viewing my work and trying to truthfully gather an understanding of both it and myself.
I am often asked what my work is about and I have come to the conclusion recently that the answers I give are made in haste and come out wrong - I reply with words such as 'I was an orphan, it is about Romania, it is about rejection and abandonment, it is about the loss and gain of a family'.
Of course, in many respects my work does belong in these categories but I have come to realise that these feelings belong to me, they are sacred, they are mine and mine only. They need protecting. I have come to fear that the more these recollections, unique memories and experiences are displayed, the quicker they will diminish, their value will be lost and the truth will bend. If I persist in this way, I believe ultimately that these feelings will come to mean nothing to me, that I will just feel like I am telling someone else's story.
My recent visit to Romania, and in particular the time I spent with Adrian Ghenie, made a huge impact on me. As I explained in my introduction, loss and trauma is always with me, I cannot turn my back on it. However, in future work, I want to show these things in a more subtle way - as Adrian says 'a painting has to lose something to gain something'. Like in his painting, Fig: 3 ‘The Boogeyman’, Adrian presents Ceausescu's horrific persecution of the Romanian people in a subtle, hidden way and in doing so, he is able to leave his own insecurities buried in the painting. This also applies to Doris Salcedo who, in Fig: 1 ‘The Orphan’s Tunic’, disguises the tragedy in such a simple format that it is easy to digest.
I will have to adjust the way in which I select my imagery and find different methods of using that imagery to tell the story of loss and trauma. By displaying it in less literal ways, I will be able to detach myself and my story, while still harnessing the power of my feelings towards the subject. I feel empowered now to explore the loss and trauma of others without always having to refer back to my own experiences. This might seem an insensitive approach to working, and to formulate ideas for working, but like both Salcedo and Adrian Gheine, acting as the witness to tragedy is far less damaging to oneself ……and their suffering is still mine and mine still theirs.
In thinking of an appropriate ending for this essay, I have been seeking a way to reconcile my work with the loss and trauma of my life. Polonius’s advice to his son, Laertes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, provides both comfort and reassurance.
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And this must follow, as night the day
Thou canst not then be false to any man”. (Bate, J. 2007 p.1935)