The artist lecture entitled La Piel De La Memorial The skin: Space for Repression and Expression was given by Buenos Aires artist Mirta Kupferminc. Over the years many museums have bought her artworks and she has even lectured to universities. While being the daughter of Holocaust survivors she uses her artwork to express the memory of repression and to bring about a change to her viewers. Although stating that her artwork is very Jewish, one wouldn’t know that at first glance. For example, one artwork from her Skin of Memory collection is the wing chair which is essentially a wooden chair with wings. Kupferminc stated that with this she is marking a certain place for the person who lived there, in that moment. With this she took two photos, one with her mother sitting in the chair with the common concentration camp number tattoo, and the other with a famous musician from Buenos Aires who is covered in traditional tattoos head to toe. The juxtaposition of the two is very evident, although Kupferminc continues to subject her audience into the artwork by placing both color photos in front of a large video screen of moving subjects. Although the video was in black and white there were instances of people wearing the color red who were subjected out. Visitors who came to see this exhibition also got to experience another aspect of the project where Kupferminc had each visitor get a semi-permanent tattoo of either a traditional symbol or to anyone dressed in red-an identification number tattoo. The subjects soon started to realize that they belonged to a group and were being singled out.
As well as this, Kupferminc has done many other artworks including a photo of her photo-shopped hand with traditional Hungarian cloth overtop. With this, Kupferminc embroidered her mothers’ identification number onto the cloth. One part of this artwork that I thought was interesting was the fact that she left the needle lying on the cloth with the string still attached. She exclaimed that this was an obvious reference towards the pain that both she and her family have suffered. I’d have to say though that the most interesting artwork that she showed was her video. Before watching, she told us to just relax and feel the video, and that it was meant to be understood afterwards. The first part was a scene of her poking holes through a balloon-like material with a needle to the sounds of classical music. The second part then shows her sewing red string though the balloon into the word “NOMBRE,” coupled with another scene of her stippling the number with a pattern onto wet paper and letting it bleed. The third scene then shows women speaking Spanish and making cloths. At the end it says “the name& the number; El nombre y el numero.” Once again this is a clear reference to the pain and suffering that her family has had to endure over the years and the repression of the pain caused by the memory inflicted onto the skin. One last statement that Mirta Kupferminc stated that I found interesting was when she referenced Picasso by saying that “art is the light to the truth.” This is something that I truly believe in with artwork because art has and will always be another mode for expression; especially from repression such as this.
Overall I found Mirta Kupferminc’s lecture to be really inspirational and beautiful. She really had a deep passion for her artwork and really seems to want her viewers to experience the uneasiness that she has experienced with her artwork and life. To me, by using subjects that are close to her such as her mother, she is really able to make her artwork relate to all of it’s viewers by using a subject that we all have experience with-our mothers. Lastly, I found it really interesting when she explained how she was uneasy with showing her mother the artwork, and telling her that it would be in a huge exhibition, only to which her mother replied with “nothing will ever be as strong and hurtful as what I already went through.”
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