Carnage Series

Erinnerung im Exil/Exiled Memory Project

“Erinnerung im Exil/Exiled Memories ” represents a transnational, inter-generational conversation about the Holocaust.  Largely comprised of digitized prints derived from photos, paintings and archival documents, the project begins with the translation of 70 letters written by my grandparents, Moses Frostig and Beile Samuely, between 1938-1941, to my father Benjamin Frostig, who fled Vienna in 1938. These letters and the two surviving passport photos of each grandparent constitute the primary sources of artistic investigation regarding the long-term effects of war on survivors and their descendents.  

My grandparents’ letters and various documents preserved by my father become navigational tools, guiding my process of recovering my family’s narrative. In this piecemeal fashion, akin to the irregularities of memory itself, I begin to assemble my grandparents’ story alongside my father’s harrowing escape from Vienna, following his arrest in 1938.

The overall project represents the intersection of personal and public memory regarding Holocaust history, and deals with ideas about presence and absence, memory and voice, and rupture and repair. Commemorating the seventieth anniversary of the Anschluss, the work is permanently installed at the University of Vienna ’s School of Law where my father earned a doctoral degree in Law and Economics in 1936. The project restores honor and dignity to my family, while delivering a personal response to this tragic period of history.