Exhibitions
MARA TRACHTENBERG ARTIST STATEMENT
WORKS IN PROGRESS
The work in this show is a continuation of Among Us and a new visual exploration of my experience living with Chronic Migraine Disease. They are all works in progress. Beginning in April of this year, I began to experience daily migraine-which has been one of the toughest periods I have had since being diagnosed with chronic migraine in 2020. Relentless pain, fatigue, nausea, light and sound sensitivity as well as dizziness has made daily activities challenging. Making the work for this show through this and despite this feels like a win, though it may not all be in its final form.
I build worlds using cut-paper stop motion animation, collage, sculpture and installation. The world of Among Us features insect/human hybrid creatures who serve as avatars for the human capacity towards monstrosity. This world reflects our world and critiques the hierarchical structures of power, its abuses, violence and destruction.
Good Guys/Bad Guys is a cut paper stop motion animation that examines cycles of violence that the good guy/bad guy binary sustains, obscuring trauma, fear, power imbalances and the systems that produce harm. In this animation, the monsters perform gymnastics flipping, rolling, cartwheeling mimicking the circularity of these cycles while the background moves and the words, “Good Guys/ Bad guys are whispered. The monster’s bodies are the same pattern as the background, making them disappear and reappear mirroring the visibility and invisibility of violence as the backgrounds move and pulse.
Pattern Wall (Hera 2026) is an installation of original patterns that are made from the designs on the monster’s heads. Creating patterns is an exercise in transforming the unrelenting chaos into something organized and comprehensible. I use these patterns to design an experience that is both overwhelming and beautiful.
The Monster’s Waltz is a cut paper stop motion animation featuring the monsters that uses dance as a means to talk about the use of violence as an abuse of power. The Monster’s waltz is a dance of monsters who dance with weapons of war, their partners in maintaining their power through destruction.
Migraine Self Portraits are photographic distortions of my face made over this summer. They are reflections of what I experience when having a migraine attack. Migraine distorts time, my image of myself , my priorities and my ability to function in daily life.
ULI BRAHMST ARTIST STATEMENT
IMPRINTING THE WITNESS
What are they observing? How are they processing the world around them? And what are they asked to follow?
While I am wrapped up in my daily life and all that collides around me, I am too often not asking myself how young people are seeing what I see? How what I experience translates to them as they observe from a different vantage point equipped with other memories and tools. One thing I am certain of is that they are watching and that they are impacted by the world we are creating for and with them, whether it is in our lives with family, friends, and community, or whether it reaches them through screens and algorithms.
I see us standing at the kitchen counter with the computer open following in crushing disbelief as January 6th plays out, the war in Ukraine starts, October 7th unfold, kids are being pulled from the rubble, as LA is burning, child abuse discourse is dominating the headlines, legal immigrants are getting arrested, kids separated from their parents to be contained in warehouses, demonstrators are shot in the street, and students and their teachers are killed in their schools. My child’s tears are streaming down her beautiful face and I feel painfully uncomfortable as I am still unprepared and ill-equipped to parent the shocking realities we are witnessing.
Over time I have immersed myself in a body of work that tries to imagine how this world may look to somebody who is young, maybe still a child. Separation, loss, abuse, migration, wars, environmental threats, violence - whether lived or witnessed - are their daily bread together with parents’ expectations that they grow up to be “successful adults”. I ask myself, are we role modeling successful lives, showing them a promising path forward? Or, do we need to dig deeper, listen better, and imagine with our hearts wide open the world as they may see it, and how we can be more compassionate adults, better stewards of this world as we shape the way for their futures?