Award-winning artist Caren Garfen talked to us in Episode 24 about her exquisite miniature artworks which reflect on the history of antisemitism. Her work is currently exhibited at the National Holocaust Museum in Nottinghamshire, so we invited Jo Herlihy to do a review for us.
This is a beautiful exhibition. Each piece is simple storytelling tied to rich ideas with delicate craftsmanship.
There is a profound melancholy to it all — not because it recalls some general loss of something from the past, but due to the rending of intimate ties of family — of long, long established tradition manifested in a sitting room; in a beautiful teacup; in cloth; in script and scripture; in toys; in the typewriter; in the book; in the walls; in the suitcases; in the opticians lens. The stitched detail is the mark Caren Garfen uses to signify individual presence, individual thoughts, the person and the people of the story.
What makes Garfen so successful in her current work is her mastery of form and content. Craft itself is her mark that forces the story of individual presence.
Her content is the holocaust, but it is also of past and present. The form is the rendering of human life in its banal and its glorious detail. Many exhibitions today can be oblique, apparently challenging the audience to think. But in this exhibition, the main message is right in front of you – asking you to reflect on the parallels between the past and today’s acts of human debasement through applying group identity, the questioning of equal status, the use of tropes, caricatureand distortion – all part of the gradual process of dehumanisation. Nevertheless, it is in the beauty and in the depth of the pieces where the success of the exhibition lies.
This comment from my friend is a great summary,
“The delicacy, intricacy and the craftsmanship of the exhibition, and her insistence of tenderness, is a counter to the horror of the holocaust itself. It forces you to see it under her terms — that is, humane and tender.”
For more details go to: Fabricated? - a Temporary Exhibition by Caren Garfen
National Holocaust Museum, Acre Edge Road, Laxton, Newark, Nottinghamshire NG22 0PA.
The exhibition is part of celebrations marking 30 years of the National Holocaust Museum. Entry varies. Adult price £10.00 valid for a years entrance to the museum.
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