SHIMON ATTIE'S SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATIONS AS ENIGMATIC MONUMENTS TO SURVIVAL

Abstract

Site-specific installations Between Dreams and History (1998) and The History of Another (2002), by American artist Shimon Attie, explore how reinterpretations of the past have helped to promote cultural survival for Jewish communities in the Lower East Side of New York and the former ghetto of Rome. They suggest that reinventing memories enabled people to create new connections between past and present, fostering a sense of shared identity and empowerment. By inviting viewers into multilayered, contradictory relationships with the histories of each site, the projects have the potential to turn viewers into figurative descendents of the people they see, responsible for carrying on their memories in new forms. At the same time, the projects tacitly explore the limitations of memory as a tool for cultural survival and the limits of their own potential to hold people together. They call attention to the lives of people for whom new narratives have not alleviated marginalization and to forms of narrativization that have simultaneously strengthened and attenuated communal identity.