Portraits from Beyond

14 April - 5 May 2007

 

Erna Bodenstein-Ferreira’s Portraits from Beyond explores themes relating to human frailty, transience and mortality, similar to previous exhibitions in South Africa and Spain. These themes are explored through portraiture, mainly of women, based on the artist’s own documentation of photographic images of females interred at Auschwitz and Birkenau during the Second World War. In these works the artist pieces together fragmentary and layered narratives, which reflect the selective nature of collective memory.

 

Erna Bodenstein-Ferreira se Portraits from Beyond ondersoek tema’s verwant aan menslike kwesbaarheid, verganlikheid en sterflikheid, soortgelyk aan vorige uitstallings in Suid-Afrika en Spanje. Hierdie tema’s word ondersoek deur portretstudies, hoofsaaklik van vrouens, gebaseer op die kunstenaar se eie dokumentasie van fotografiese beelde van vroue in aanhouding by Auschwitz en Birkenau gedurende die Tweede Wêreldoorlog. In hierdie werke bring die kunstenaar elemente van gefragmenteerde en gestratifiseerde verhale saam wat die selektiewe natuur van ‘n kollektiewe geheue weerspieël.