Legacy. Migration. Memory: Beyond the Forest

On January 12, 2016, the Griffin Museum opens with “Beyond the Forest,” an exhibition of photographs by Loli Kantor. This exhibition is shown under the overarching idea of “Legacy. Migration. Memory.”. Two solo exhibits by Loli Kantor and Rosemarie Zens will be featured in the Main Gallery of the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. Rosemarie Zens’ body of work is called “The Sea Remembers.”

Larry Volk, in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin, will exhibit “A Story of Rose’s” and Priya Kambli, will exhibit “Kitchen Gods” in the Griffin Gallery. These two artists are also exhibiting work under the “Legacy, Migration. Memory.” umbrella.

Paula Tognarelli, executive director of the Griffin Museum of Photography, says of the exhibitions, “The backdrop of family history and its memories inform identity. Through photographs the artists of “Legacy. Migration. Memory.” share familial resettlement stories. Customs, culture and the individual journeys vary but at heart, the passage to the present is all rooted in legacy.”

In “Beyond the Forest,” Loli Kantor explores personal and cultural memory. As the daughter of holocaust survivors, Kantor visited Poland and Ukraine from 2004 until 2012. Kantor says that she “documents the lives of the disappearing population of Holocaust survivors and the reemergence of Jewish life beginning to slowly transform some of the communities in Poland and Ukraine today.” Loli lost both of her parents by the time she was fourteen.

Kantor uses a variety of photographic processes to tell her story. She says that in “using color photographs to examine home life, religion and tradition, Jewish lives and rituals emerge as vibrant and colorful representations of struggle, identity, and strength.” Kantor also says she “uses black and white prints to reveal another layer in one’s consciousness about Jewish presence and absence there.” Her small intimate works in palladium “show little stories, similar to snap shots, referring back to a timeless look at a people and a culture. They also create a private space in which she could process the emotional impacts that this world unveiled to me.”

Born in Paris, France and raised in Tel Aviv, Israel, Kantor emigrated to the U.S. in 1984 and lives in Fort Worth Texas. Kantor’s work has won numerous awards, including Critical Mass top 50, PhotoNOLA Reviewers choice award and Lishui award of excellence for her solo exhibition in Lishui, China. Her photographs are in private and museum collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin; Lishui Museum of Photography in China and Lviv National Museum in Ukraine, among others.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website