Anna Mushkin

In Front of the Mirror

The photos in the exhibition were weaved out of local everyday life, as an act of staging real or questionable memories. This body of work sets out to formulate an image of covering and revealing, a space that simulates life as an unknown, a temptation, and examines the relation between yearning and holding, between now and the next moment.
My life started in a different city and country, but if you ask me, my story begins in the city of Nahariya, in a small house by the sea. But then, the family photographs come in – the black and white, the vacations in Sochi, the wallpaper, the snow, the fur coats – and I understand that I am also something else. As someone who grew up into her parent’s stories and photos, I realized that this is such a strong narrative that it almost becomes my own memory, only without a real experience; a memory of another kind, which now exists in me, in a transitional space of sorts, without roots or a distinct structure.
Scholars calls this phenomenon “postmemory,” shaped via stories and mostly photographs of family members from the previous generations. This interpretation allows a conversation about memory that is not limited to the past, but also addresses the present and the future