Rafael Goldchain

Familial Ground

March 6, 2008 - March 30, 2008

Rafael Goldchain’s Familial Ground is an autobiographical exhibition that features digitally altered self-portrait photographs that are detailed reenactments of ancestral figures. It suggests that grounding identity within a familial and cultural history subject to extinction, geographic displacements, and cultural dislocations entails mixing equal measures of fact and imagination. It involves a process of gathering and connecting scattered fragments of past familial history while acknowledging the impossibility of complete retrieval. It attempts to create an illusion of a whole family gathered while underlining its fragmentation and dispersal.