Monica Rabinowitz re-creates the memories of her Bulgarian grandmother’s life and projects them onto the interior windshield of a deconstructed tram car in her installation, Line #5- Knyazhevo.
Although the Jews of “Old Bulgaria” were saved from deportation to Nazi concentration camps during WWII, they were subject to the law for Defense of the Nation. Similar to the restrictive Nuremburg Laws passed in Germany, Bulgarian Jews were required to wear the yellow Star of David and were stripped of their homes, livelihoods, and citizenship. Young Jewish men between the ages of 24 and 45 were sent to forced labor camps in the Bulgarian countryside. As a result, a number of Jews fled Bulgaria seeking refuge.
In Line #5-Knyazhevo, Rabinowitz tells a visual narrative of the Nazi occupation and her family’s departure from Bulgaria in 1942. After visiting Sofia for the first time during the summer of 2007, her grandmother’s memories became temporarily displaced by her new experience of the city. Through constructed photographic imagery, video footage, sound, tram seating, and moving windshield wipers, Rabinowitz’s installation evokes a sense of time and place and negotiates the coexistence of both her own and her grandmother’s experiences.
Line #5 – Knyazhevo is supported in part by a grant from the Harold Grinspoon
Foundation.
March 1 – April 30 (tentative)
Hampden Gallery Incubator Space
Free and open to the public