An unusual new exhibition of works by artist Daria Martin explores the unconscious memories of her paternal grandmother, who fled the former Czechoslovakia during the Holocaust. Martin’s art springs from an extensive archive of dream diaries her grandmother created over a 35-year period, originally chronicled for the purposes of psychoanalysis. This multimedia exhibition includes two films, one created using computer gaming technology that takes users on a journey through a 3-D rendering of the villa in Brno as it appeared when the grandmother lived there, and another, with actors, that presents a reimagining of four of the grandmother’s dreams.
The installation operates simultaneously as a portrait of Martin’s ancestor, a self-portrait, and an exploration of intolerance, migration, loss, resilience and intergenerational trauma. The exhibition was co-commissioned by Barbican Centre, London, and The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco where it is showing through February 19, 2020. thecjm.org/exhibitions/110