Visual Arts Library
Conditional
Artist: Anna Bialobroda
Date:
1990
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 226 x 63.5 cm
Event: Holocaust
Motif:
Remembrance
Faces
Anna Bialobroda was born after World War Two in Lodz, Poland, which had been one of the largest Jewish ghettos during the war. Conditional is part of a series of works that seeks to address the inability of mass culture to comprehend the losses brought on by the Holocaust. The works contain two parts and are painted on narrow, rectangular canvases. The top parts are larger, and feature fragments of haunted faces, primarily rendered in black and white. The lower portions of the paintings consist of darkly colored backgrounds upon which fragments of colored "Exit" signs appear, representing the projection of the image in a movie theater. The faces and the signs in the works are cropped in a manner that suggests they are being glimpsed only briefly, perhaps through a barely opened doorway. The faces return the viewer's gaze, and the compressed space of the paintings makes it seem as if they are staring at the viewer more than the viewer can stare at them. Despite the promise of an exit in the paintings, the faces are trapped, evoking memories of the numerous victims of the Holocaust.
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