12 x 48 in. Wax, paper, ink, and wire on canvas. 2014.
Crowds can be joyful, but they can also be terrifying and ominous. The faces blend and meld together in a deindividuating mass. The wax quite literally melts over the reduplicated image of the crowd. The wax also isolates individuals, like eyes that meet yours in a crowd. The alternating direction of the photos adds to the disorientation and eeriness of the piece.
I made this piece during a time when I was seeing members of my family, for the first time in a long time, who moved from Poland during the Holocaust and now reside in Paris. My time reflecting on my family history influenced my perception, and the tone of this work. The barbed wire incasing the images and the melted wax is emblematic of the gas chambers that melted and dehumanized millions of Jews during the Holocaust. Further, the man's hat in the detail below (made yellow as a reaction of the hot wax burning the paper of the photo) if reminiscent of the red coat from the 1994 film Schindler's List. The only color in a black-and-white film, the red coat is shown on a young girl with her family and then, later in the film, on a pile of clothes of the camp's deceased. This scene resonated with me, and influenced intention when making this work.
The controlled randomness inherent with using the medium of wax creates an interesting, chance-infused product, generating a frenetic tension.