MeMory Zero is a project about iMMigrant faMily histories and how they relate to
processes of occlusion and repression. focusing on My own faMily of iMMigrants,
i investigate these histories in a series of collaged drawings, backed up by research
into reMote tiMes and places. the project is a way of interpolating incoMplete and
partially or fully obscured narratives that oscillate between a sense of historical
belonging and stepping outside of its boundaries. the work starts with the drawn
iMpression of a story whose eleMents are then collaged to Make palpable the
difference between these positions vis-à-vis history.
—sean sMuda
© 2023 ARTMargins and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
All images © the artist/Sean Smuda
https://doi.org/10.1162/artm_a-00341
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1) Sandomierz is home to the infamous blood libel paintings (ca. 1750) by
Karol [Charles] de Prevot called Mord Rytualny (Ritual Murder). The paintings
famously depict fictitious murders committed by Jews on Christian children.
Such stories were used as pretexts to seize Jewish property throughout Europe,
often accompanied by torture and execution. The controversy surrounding
these paintings today is that, after having been covered for eight years, since
2015, they are once again being shown in Sandomierz’s St. Paul’s Church.
2) Like many other refugees, my grandmother fled from Galicia and ended up
in Serbia during World War I. For the locals, potato cellars like this one near
the Polish/Serbian border (in 1918) were typical hiding places from Russian
troops. Flour was hidden in a tree, then discovered.
3) In 1894 England, Irish immigrants, as well as the entire English lower class,
did not have great social mobility. Although labor unions had started to form,
the constitutional monarchy still dominated politics. Queen Victoria made a
series of visits to the industrial North to bolster the crown. After she noticed
my Irish great-grandfather calming a horse, he was promptly promoted to the
rank of a detective.
4) Colonialism, among other things, led to the import of exotic animals into
the United Kingdom and to the creation of many pubs featuring monkeys in
these pubs’ names and logos, as well as in live entertainment. Humorously or
not, the pub signs embraced Darwin’s theory of evolution by offering a human
glimpse at our simian ancestors. In this collage, that very glimpse, as it were,
fasts forward.
5) Used to traveling by any means, immigrant descendants hitchhiked during
the years of the American Dust Bowl and after, despite all the dangers and the
fact that it was outlawed in some states. Indeed, hitchhiking became a defining
sign of freedom and opportunity during the 1950s. My father hitchhiked to
commute to college across the country. Hitchhiking still persists today, and
US law simply states that “it is illegal to walk or stand on the roadway but it
is not illegal to stand or walk on the sidewalk, shoulder, or at ramp entrances
of the roadway.”1
1 https://www.gohitchhiking.com/is-hitchhiking-illegal-in-the-usa
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