Fire Forges In Me

Fire Forges In Me (or “fire forges in me that which will allow me to carry what the fire could not burn”) is a 2023 digital collage about resistance to persecution. Centered around the themes of fire, clay, and survival, the piece explores how art itself might be used as a tool to protect your community and survive oppression. Tying together the both the fires of kilns and crematoriums, the clays of pottery and golems, Fire Forges In Me captures the complex cultural associations particularly situated within Ashkenazi descendants of Holocaust survivors.

Fire Forges In Me incorporates images both historical and personal. The right side of the composition focuses heavily on imagery surrounding the horrific cremations that took place at concentration and death camps during the Holocaust. The image of prisoners being forced to burn the bodies of fellow Holocaust victims is sourced from Holocaust Memorial archives.

The golems featured on the left side of the image are take from my own collection of golems, two of them made from clay and the other golem made from marzipan (a tradition my Oma, brother, and I have been doing lately). As a symbol within Jewish folklore for self-protection, survival, and the power of our artistic creations, the clay golem’s significance has only grown following the aftermath of the Nazi regime.

Lastly, the images of pottery arcing across the image are my own great grandmother’s pottery. Born as an Ashkenazi Jew in Germany, my great-grandmother was forced to flee the country in 1935 after Hitler’s rise to power, and after making a life for her family here in the United States, she took to the art of ceramics. As earthen objects within my family history that speak to survival and resistance to oppression, they too act as figurative golems.

After gathering all of this imagery, I assembled it in Photoshop and used this project as a opportunity to experiment with gradient maps and posterization.

This piece is dedicated to my Sassy Oma and my Oma.