Between Disappearances: The Performance of Affective Archiving in Bracha L. Ettinger's Eurydice Series
Date
2016-12-16T17:06:35Z
Authors
McMillan, Julia
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Abstract
Artist, philosopher, and psychoanalyst Bracha L. Ettinger’s Eurydice painting series is
built upon a practice of sustained aesthetic, psychological, and ethical engagement with
archival photographs of the Holocaust. First begun in 1992 and now numbering over
fifty, the paintings investigate the ways in which intergenerationally transmitted trauma
interacts with and is made manifest through the female form. While much of the
scholarship on the Eurydice series analyses the paintings formally and aesthetically, often
alongside Ettinger’s psychoanalytic theories of what she calls the matrixial gaze, this
thesis examines the performative aspects of Ettinger’s process of creation by exploring
the ways in which Ettinger’s process of “artworking” allows for an affective reexamination
of traditional archival practices by situating the body within and as part of
the archive.
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Keywords
Holocaust Studies, Contemporary Art, Psychoanalysis, Feminist Studies, Ettinger, Bracha, 1948-