Artist Statement:

My Mother loved watching me grow up. She said looking at me made her laugh as I reminded her of herself as a child.

Thinking about this now, I find this odd. My Mother had almost no memories of her childhood. She remembered that her father was shot by the Nazis but nothing else about him. She remembered being deported to Siberia with her Sister and her Mother. She remembered them dying there but she could not remember their faces. She remembered being taken to the orphanage in Africa. She remembered the nuns who cared for her and the friends she played with but she could never remember any of their names.

It’s almost as if someone deleted years from her memories between the ages of seven and seventeen. She and her family were somehow selected as unnecessary, to be erased, them completely, her partially.

It is also very odd that she could not remember any unpleasant people from the war, not one. Logically, considering her experiences they must have existed. They are gone.

I have been trying to understand what she went through by creating what might have gone through her mind in that lost period, false memories of a sort.

It is fortunate for my Mother and me that she didn't grow up hating or fearing the people that did this to her. She always seemed to have a positive view of the world, she enjoyed her life. She was happy.

I am not sure if I would have been the same had her life been mine.