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In 2011, the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre hosted Ian Penn's first solo exhibition, Projections: A Monument to Personal Memory. A book/catalogue was issued with the same title. The overall exhibit largely evolved as a response to an assignment from Emily Carr teacher Sheila Hall who challenged her students to transformed twenty pounds of any object into a different object. Penn responded by melting 674 Shabbat candles onto reproductions of cherished family photos, mounted on parchment paper to evoke both skin and Torah scrolls.
With his Projections, Penn explored the "Second Generation's" relation to the Holocaust with a combination of drawings, video, photography and sculpture. His portraits of elderly women were accompanied by video testimonies; family photos were overlaid with wax from melted Shabbat candles; sculptures of parchment paper suggested the fragility of memory and "post-memory."
"Post-memory," according to Marianne Hirsch, author of Children of the Holocaust, "describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right."
The overall VHEC installation was inspired by Penn's conversations with elderly women, some of whom were living in nursing homes. His original intention as a physician/artist was to generate portraits until it became clear he might accomplish more in the long run by, first and foremost, listening.
"I did not specifically focus on the Holocaust trauma in their lives," Penn told VHEC curator Nina Krieger, "but, rather, the before and after, the small stories that shaped them." The fragments that emerged were personal rather than political.
"I went out on my bicycle in a summer dress and a handkerchief in my pocket," one woman told him. "That's all I had. It was the last time I ever saw my parents."
As the son of Holocaust survivor parents, Ian Penn was born on September 13, 1952 in Sydney, Australia and raised in an observant Jewish home. As a physician who specialized in interventional cardiology, Penn was the Director of Interventional Cardiology at Vancouver General Hospital from 1992 to 2000. Having also studied philosophy and political science, he attended Emily Carr University and earned a Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver Emerging Artist Award for visual arts for his work on Holocaust memory and post-memory which premiered in 2010 as part of the annual Emily Carr University graduation show. Accompanying the video portraits of seniors was his companion piece, 20 lbs, with that melted Shabbat candles that also focussed on family, history, heritage, ritual and remembrance.
BOOKS:
Projections: A Monument to Personal Memory (2011)
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Olga Livshin colour photo.
With his Projections, Penn explored the "Second Generation's" relation to the Holocaust with a combination of drawings, video, photography and sculpture. His portraits of elderly women were accompanied by video testimonies; family photos were overlaid with wax from melted Shabbat candles; sculptures of parchment paper suggested the fragility of memory and "post-memory."
"Post-memory," according to Marianne Hirsch, author of Children of the Holocaust, "describes the relationship of the second generation to powerful, often traumatic, experiences that preceded their births but that were nevertheless transmitted to them so deeply as to seem to constitute memories in their own right."
The overall VHEC installation was inspired by Penn's conversations with elderly women, some of whom were living in nursing homes. His original intention as a physician/artist was to generate portraits until it became clear he might accomplish more in the long run by, first and foremost, listening.
"I did not specifically focus on the Holocaust trauma in their lives," Penn told VHEC curator Nina Krieger, "but, rather, the before and after, the small stories that shaped them." The fragments that emerged were personal rather than political.
"I went out on my bicycle in a summer dress and a handkerchief in my pocket," one woman told him. "That's all I had. It was the last time I ever saw my parents."
As the son of Holocaust survivor parents, Ian Penn was born on September 13, 1952 in Sydney, Australia and raised in an observant Jewish home. As a physician who specialized in interventional cardiology, Penn was the Director of Interventional Cardiology at Vancouver General Hospital from 1992 to 2000. Having also studied philosophy and political science, he attended Emily Carr University and earned a Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver Emerging Artist Award for visual arts for his work on Holocaust memory and post-memory which premiered in 2010 as part of the annual Emily Carr University graduation show. Accompanying the video portraits of seniors was his companion piece, 20 lbs, with that melted Shabbat candles that also focussed on family, history, heritage, ritual and remembrance.
BOOKS:
Projections: A Monument to Personal Memory (2011)
[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit
Olga Livshin colour photo.
