As Brandeis' Women's Studies Research Center rings in its tenth year in 2012, its arts center, the Kniznick Gallery, has been very actively providing our campus with dynamic exhibitions that tap into some of our deepest emotional and intellectual nerves. Its most recent exhibit is a very experiential installation by artist Lydia Kann Nettler, called "Embedded Legacies." Kniznick Gallery Curator and Director of the WSRC's Art Program Michele L'Heureux curated the exhibit, which has been open for viewing since Oct. 1 and will run through Dec. 18.
Nettler works as a therapist, writes fiction and has exhibited at many art shows and projects in New England. "Embedded Legacies" is a very personal exhibit and is a self-exploration of the artist's family history and dynamics. She seeks to answer questions that are on all of our minds-how has my family been affected by its cultural history? How have my parents' legacies and experiences influenced me? What is my cultural and familial identity, and what does it mean to me?
For Nettler, these questions are focused on her mother's experiences as a Jew and a foreigner in France during World War II and how this translates into an identity for the artist. In an introduction to the installation, Nettler shares: "As the child of a survivor of the War and of a mother who succumbed to disabling mental illness, is the artist telling this story as one of pride or shame as the legacy of the second generation? The creation of this installation offers one possible response to that question."
Walking into the installation is very much like literally walking into a forest. The white walls are covered with black charcoal drawings of trees and vegetation, from floor to ceiling. There are paper flaps in the walls that can be peeled back to reveal images of concentration camps during the Holocaust, and of people: loved ones, prisoners. Between the walls of the wide, hall-like gallery, there are many 'trees'-tall, thick, short, skinny, standing upright, fallen about the path, clustered, standing alone, with branches or without. The trees are white cylindrical forms crafted out of papier-m??ch?(c), and their bark and grain is detailed with the same black charcoal strokes. There is not a single color in the installation, and the black and white charcoal-swept forest initially feels stark and stoic, and even a touch cold.
But when I approached the trees, I noticed that amongst the papier-m??ch?(c), there were words embedded in the sculptures-hand-written, typed in stuffy academic fonts, typed in loose, friendly fonts, carefully scrapped from newspapers. The words are not all singular or phrasal; some are pieces of prose or narrative. They are almost swimming among the bark, as some are right-side-up and some are upside-down and sideways, some overlap and cover parts of each other. The installation is telling a story, but not one that is read from cover to cover with its thoughts organized into pristine typeset. The viewer is, rather, walking through a forest of two generations of thoughts and experience, all jumbled and frank and illusive in the way that stories gathered from family members collect in one's mind. I felt really touched by this concept, and seeing the detail with which Nettler tells her family's story made me think about my own.
Having a few moments to speak with L'Heureux about the installation made the forest much clearer to me. "Relationships, history, memory," she says, "this exhibit does it all at once. Lots of visitors connect to the Holocaust sites, to the forest, or to the mother-daughter relationship." One can certainly feel the pushes and embraces of the artist's "challenging, rich relationship with her mother." L'Heureux says that visitors feel "lured in, seduced by the work." Personally, the curator shares, "I like art that seduces you by just the way it looks, then shows you many more layers." Nettler's installation accomplishes this expertly.
L'Heureux affirms that this installation is one of regeneration and rebirth. Beyond the artist's factual historical exploration of her mother's tumultuous life, the words crafted into the trees detail the way that Nettler has filled in the holes of familial memory.
Despite the wordy nature of the installation, I do believe that there is one sentiment that is most valuable within the exhibit, which is Nettler's primary demand of viewers: "Don't turn your eyes away! React!"