Artist talk - Mirta Kupferminc

Mirta Kupferminc is an artist who's life has been indirectly affected by the Holocaust. Her mother and father were both survivors and in her talk she focused on tatoos as ornamental vs. tatoos in the Holocaust. She feels that in both ways tatoos give that person an identity that they can forever relate to. She described herself to our class as a digital artist, but many of the works she was showing us were videos and a few pictures, which in this day and age could mean that they were photoshopped and made digitally.

She tried to reinact the Holocaust in a way through one of her exhibits. A tatoo artist was there to give henna tatoos to any who wanted one, except he would only give numbers to those wearing red. Those who were wearing red soon came to realize that they were in a different group than the rest of the patrons and they had something to identify each other with. The number's gave them an identity, just as the survivors of the Holocaust have come together to have an identity via their number.

Mirta always uses her mother's number in her works because she was too young to remember what her father's number was and would not like to make up a number or worse yet steal a survivor's number. This keeps her artwork real and more touching. The audience can relate to the fact that this was an actual victim of the Holocaust's number.

The picture of her mother sitting on the chair with wings and the rock star sitting in the same wingged chair help to show the difference between tatoos as ornamental and tatoos given in the Holocaust. Your eye is not immediately drawn to her mother's tatoo, but your eye is drawn to the man's many tatoos. His posture helps you to realize that he has gotten all of these tatoos purposefully, whereas heer mother's posture indicates that she might not have wanted to get her tatoo on purpose.

The video she showed was called "The Skin of Memories". This video compared the pain of tatooin with that of embroidery, a skill which Mirta's mother enjoys to practice and has passed on to her. She said in the talk of how she is interested in objects because she uses every other media and wants to involve physical objects into her work. The video started off with a needle pricking at a latex skin. It later peirced the skin and made embroidery. During the video, the viewer could feel the pain of getting stuck by the needle. It then changed to embroidery very close up, and one could feel the pain of the needle going through the fabric.

Mirta Kupferminc is an artist who dabbles in all forms of art and her works are stunningly powerful.