Memory Transplants is a collection of paintings based on my grandparents’ photographic slides that explores identity, cultural memory, and the knowledge passed down and lost through generations of migration. Through photographic material traces such as blur, overexposure, and light-damaged colour, each painting is linked to real events in my heritage, which then become part of my memories through my painting process.
These paintings depict moments in the Jewish diaspora in the late 60s and early 70s, and are representative of the diasporic experience of feeling like an outsider both in your culture and in wider society. In my work I experiment with colour, mark-making, the photographer’s gaze and a relationship between presence and absence. This allows me to imbue each image with emotion that is not only specific to diasporic peoples, but to everyone who has ever experienced alienation. For me, the pictures I choose to paint tell certain family narratives, which are not necessarily meant to be understood, but felt on a subconscious level. I also hope to bring awareness to the long history of Jewish diaspora and to immortalise my grandparents’ memories in oils.
